Student Growth Through Professional Travel
Financial Analyst Competition Leads to Enriching Conference Experience
Students Bring Back Lessons, Opportunities for Growth From a Premedical Conference
Learn outside the classroom and expand your knowledge with off-campus, real-world experiences. The Wilson Center supports off-campus professional development opportunities that build leadership and innovation skills for students. Bring the important skills you learn at Grinnell into your life. These professional development opportunities help enhance your life experience — whether in your career and service or in your learning and critical thinking skills — while building your social and professional network.
The Wilson Center is open to sponsoring events, conferences, and other relevant off-campus opportunities that you believe strengthen your innovation and leadership skills, knowledge, and critical-thinking ability. We offer funding for some experiences that make an impact and align with our mission.
Guidance for Proposals
Groups of students are more likely to have a proposal funded when they collaborate with a faculty or staff sponsor to develop an intentional plan to build leadership and innovation skills. The sponsor would facilitate a meeting prior to the event to help students prepare for the conference and find appropriate leadership development opportunities. After the conference, the sponsor will facilitate a discussion to process the lessons from the conference and lead the group in preparing a presentation for relevant campus constituencies. Off-campus events not specifically related to leadership, innovation, or enterprise are strongly encouraged to collaborate with a sponsor.
Conferences or workshops primarily focused on research or experiences in other disciplines are less likely to be funded. Partial funding to build leadership skills via these discipline-specific conferences is possible provided the leadership development is intentional and facilitated by a sponsor.
The Wilson Center does not fund credit-bearing courses. The Wilson Center will support educational programs such as non-credit-bearing courses, online professional development programs, and certificate programs at a maximum of 60%. Such activities that occur during an academic semester are unlikely to be supported. Such requests must clearly indicate how the same learning outcomes cannot be achieved through Grinnell College courses or those available to students through LinkedIn Learning.
See a list of conferences the Wilson Center has funded or that may be of interest to students to foster their leadership and/or innovation skills.
Submit a Proposal
To be considered for funding, students must submit a well-articulated proposal. While all proposals are considered, there is no guarantee they will be accepted.