Contest Rules

Award Amounts

1. Winner: $1,000 personal stipend (transferred to bursar account) and funding for the proposed pilot project (up to $10,000 for 1 year)
2. 2nd Place: $500 personal stipend (transferred to bursar account)
3. 3rd and 4th Place: $250 personal stipend (transferred to bursar account)

Submission Timeline and Eligibility

1. Proposals for are due by January 31, 2020. The submission portal will be open from October 31 to January 31.
2. The top 12 finalists will be invited to present to a group of public health professionals for 3-5 minutes in March.
3. Authors of winning entries will be notified by April 2020.
4. Individuals or teams may submit proposals. (Note that the personal stipend prizes are singular, meaning that if a team of 4 students wins, they will receive $1,000 total, not $4,000 total in stipends.)
5. All undergraduate or graduate students enrolled full time at Indiana University Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses as of January 31, 2019 may apply.
6. We particularly encourage teams that include representatives from multiple different schools or fields of study.
7. If the winning team does not include a student from the School of Public Health - Bloomington, we may include such a student in the funded pilot project. (This will not affect the scholarship payout which occurs only to the original team.)

Submission Requirements and Formatting

1. The proposed topic must address one or more aspects of substance use and/or mental health in the United States. Proposals not meeting this criterion will not be reviewed.
2. Proposals must be submitted as a single PDF containing the following:
   • Title Page
   • Contact information for all team members. Include email address, phone number, current degree program (both field of study and level of degree), and, for all graduate and doctoral students, advisor's name and email address
   • Project Narrative
   • References
3. The "Project Narrative" section must be 5 pages or fewer, including diagrams. Proposals must be single-spaced in size 12 Times New Roman font with at least half inch margins on all sides.

Project Narrative Content

1. Project Narratives must contain the following sections:
   • Introduction to the Problem (1/2 page or less)
   • Literature Review – What do we currently know about the problem, and where are there gaps in our understanding? (2 pages or less)
   • Statement of the Idea – One or two sentences fully encapsulating the idea
   • Significance – How the idea addresses the problem (1 page or less)
   • Innovation – Why is this idea innovative? (1/2 page or less)
   • Testability – With $10,000, how could this idea reasonably be tested? (1 page or less)