SPARC modeled after Magellan Scholar fellowships 
USC will spend upwards of $250,000 to improve graduate and doctoral-level research next semester.
The new program, dubbed Support to Promote the Advancement of Research and Creativity, or SPARC, will award $5,000 grants to graduate and doctoral students starting next April.
Exactly how many the Office of Research will give isn't yet clear, said Lauren Clark, USC's research program coordinator, but the office expects to award about 50, depending on how many people apply.
In all, said Prakash Nagarkatti, the vice president for research, about 5,000 students will be eligible to apply. The program is only open to students in any doctoral programs and in the master of fine arts and master of public history graduate curricula.
The fellowships were modeled after the popular Magellan Scholar program, which funds undergraduate research projects, Clark said.
Like the Magellan program, the new initiative will pay for students to buy materials, pay assistants and cover other expenses for their research projects, but it'll give them more flexibility because students will receive the cash directly, Nagarkatti said.
The program, Nagarkatti said, will help students strengthen their dissertations and theses, finish them faster, prepare them for national fellowship applications and encourage unique research.
But first, Nagarkatti said, they'll have to write a three-page proposal and have it reviewed by faculty experts.
That, Nagarkatti said, is one of the program's biggest benefits, because grant writing is "absolutely critical" to winning larger research grants down the road, like those from federal agencies, which account for the majority of USC's research awards.
"They can elaborate on this grant from three pages to five pages or six pages and be able to compete nationally for major sources of funding to support their research and to support their tuition," he said.
The grants will also pay for research expenses that students would've normally paid for out of pocket, like travel.
"Sometimes they have to go for national or international travel — somebody goes to Mexico to study some art, literature, anthropology," Nagarkatti said. "These grants can help them do all that kind of research, which otherwise we don't have support for."
The deadline for doing so is Jan. 30, 2013, and applicants will be required to attend a short training workshop beforehand. Awards will be announced April 12, 2013.
Four workshops are planned for this semester, and another two will be held in January, Clark said. The first is scheduled for Tuesday.