Competition

* Unless explicitly noted, all times indicated for deadlines are for the appropriate NL timezone (NST or NDT)

Overview

Made possible by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, the Modern Language Association’s initiative, MLA Pathways: Recruitment, Retention, and Career Readiness, equips departments and programs associated with the study of literature, language, writing, culture, area studies, and related disciplines with the tools, networks, knowledge, and resources to help undergraduate students find success throughout their education and after graduation. The core goal of the Pathways program is to enable the creation of new structures of support, at the program, campus, and regional levels, for students from groups underrepresented in the humanities—especially students of color, first-generation college students, and Pell Grant recipients—in order to allow for fuller, more equitable participation in humanities study and the postgraduate opportunities it creates. 

The 2025 step grant application opened on 12 August 2025 and will close on 29 October 2025. Last year’s virtual information session was held on 22 August 2024 and can be viewed at the link below. If you have a question that is not answered in the information session recording, sign up for the Pathways Q&A session, scheduled for 8 September from 2:00–2:45 p.m. ET.

As part of the Pathways initiative, the MLA is offering step grants of up to $10,000 for a twelve-month period. These grants are intended to support individual faculty members or small, local teams developing ways to improve the recruitment, retention, or career readiness of undergraduate students. Possible areas of support might include, but are not limited to, the following:

• fostering curricular innovation, from individual course redesign to larger-scale curricular reform, aimed at improving the recruitment, retention, and career readiness of humanities majors

• strengthening collaborations between departments and other academic units, such as admissions, career services, and advising programs, that can improve access and success throughout the undergraduate experience and beyond graduation

• creating new opportunities or refining existing opportunities for internships, undergraduate research, community-based learning, and other forms of high-impact practices and professional development for undergraduate students

• developing data-informed outreach strategies to strengthen student, peer, parental or caregiver, and public understanding of the value of humanities courses of study and potential career outcomes

• building or reinforcing pipelines between high schools or two-year institutions and four-year institutions, including structures and programming to support student success throughout the admissions or transfer process

• creating cocurricular programming, from pre-orientation sessions to connections with alumni networks, that improves retention and provides opportunities for growth

• establishing connections with institutional, community, and local workforce partners in order to support undergraduate career development

• helping faculty members identify skills, values, and perspectives gained through the study of language and literature in their courses and curricula and developing students’ abilities to document and communicate those skills, values, and perspectives

We anticipate making approximately twenty awards in the 2025 grant cycle.

In addition to the external funding agency’s submission procedures, this opportunity must also be submitted for Departmental, HSS Faculty, and Research Initiatives and Services (RIS) institutional reviews and approvals via Memorial's Researcher Portal (RP). In order to facilitate the HSS Faculty’s administrative review, please ensure "Heather C. O'Brien (Grants Facilitator)" and “Matthew Milner (Grants Facilitator)” are added as "Team Members" on your RP file. 

In accordance with University-wide approval protocols, all tabs of the RP file must be completed, the completed application must be uploaded to the “Attachments” tab, all supporting documentation including support for cash and in-kind commitments and/or letters of support must also be uploaded, and “Submit” must be pressed prior to the HSS internal deadline listed below. HSS cannot guarantee completion of an administrative review for application files that are incomplete and/or are submitted after the HSS deadline. For more detailed submission instructions and information, please consult the HSS Research Support Services website.

If you plan to apply to this competition or other research funding opportunities (as either PI or CI), e-mail an HSS Grants Facilitator, Heather C. O’Brien (HSSResearchAdmin@mun.ca or 864-8603) or Matthew Milner (HSSResearchGrants@mun.ca or 864-8050), to notify the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of your intent to apply. E-mailing the intent to apply as early as possible will help to facilitate an efficient review. A Grants Facilitator can answer any questions you may have about internal or external submission procedures and may also be able to help with proposal development.