Applying for SICSA summer school support

The intended readership of this page is academic staff members within SICSA who wish to apply for summer school support. If you are a PhD student, who wishes to attend a SICSA summer school, see the page on attending a SICSA summer school.

SICSA-sponsored summer schools

These are summer schools, held in Scotland and organised by SICSA members.

For SICSA-sponsored summer schools, it is expected that you will set the registration fee for PhD students from Scottish universities to be as set out in the standard SICSA rates. SICSA will normally cover this fee in full.

The rules of the SICSA award from the SFC require that institutions make a 50% contribution to costs and we have designed the costing process to take this into account. In essence, we assume that the SICSA contribution will be the student's registration fee and the institution's contribution will be the student's travel and subsistence costs. If your institution is hosting a summer school, the cost of facilities will be your contribution.

The application process:

1. Write a short summer school proposal setting out the topic of the summer school, the organising institution(s), the intended audience, possible international speakers, when and where you plan to run the summer school and how this contributes to one or more of the SICSA themes.
2. Work out the number of students (from Scotland and elsewhere) that you expect to attend and use the standard rates to calculate the SICSA contribution.
3. Submit your proposal and estimated costs to the SGA Director, who will take it forward for consideration by the SGA Board. You should include in your proposal information about any other agreed or possible sponsorship for the summer school. If approved, the board will set a ceiling on the SICSA contribution, taking into account any other sponsorship that you are likely to receive.
4. For summer schools to be held in 2011, we would like to have proposals by the 30th September 2010 and they will be considered by the SICSA/SGA Board early in October.
5. Your summer school publicity must mention that the summer school is SICSA sponsored.
6. You should invite PhD students working in Scotland to register for the summer school but you should not charge a fee. Rather, you should send a bill to the SGA Director which lists the names and institutions of the students who have attended from Scotland. This will be paid directly from a SICSA budget.
7. After the summer school has finished, you should submit a brief report to the SGA Board setting out the numbers of students attending, and the profits/losses made. If the registration fees do not cover all of the costs incurred, you should send details of the losses to the SGA Director who will arrange for reimbursement up the agreed limit.
8. For summer schools to be held in 2011, we hope to make sponsorship decisions within 4 weeks of submission.

Summer schools do not have to be held in summer.

SICSA-supported summer schools

SICSA will support students from Scotland to attend other summer schools (in Scotland or elsewhere). However, budget is limited for these.

SICSA will contribute towards the registration fee for students attending SICSA supported summer schools at the standard rates. Students should have approval from their supervisor to attend. The SGA Board member from the student's institution should approve the request and send the following information to the SGA Director.

1. Topic and location of summer school
2. Name of student(s)
3. Required support

If the summer school is related to SICSA themes, the request will be normally considered within a few days, without the need for discussion by the SGA Board. Exceptionally (e.g. if the summer school is not obviously related to SICSA themes), a request may have to be considered by the SGA Board.

We hope that most requests will be approved but this is subject to budget and relevance to the SICSA objectives.