Updated Grant Application Platform Rolled Out

Administrators earlier this semester updated Harvard’s centralized summer grant application system so that faculty members may submit student recommendation letters electronically, rather than in paper form, a change that was accompanied by some glitches.

As students apply for summer funding this spring, they will also see an updated user interface on the system, called the Centralized Application for Research and Travel, or CARAT. The changes have come with growing pains: some applicants encountered problems with the system when they sought funding earlier this month.

The Centralized Application for Research and Travel system for online grant applications was recently updated. By Jessica E. Schumer

“The upgrade this year really streamlined the process so that the individual centers can really control much more of what the students see when they apply,” said Meg B. Swift, director of the Student Employment Office and the Harvard College Research Program.  “We hope the ease of having faculty go into CARAT and just upload letters for anybody they have been asked to write on behalf of simplifies” the process.

Despite its potential benefits, Swift acknowledged that some students ran into problems after the launch of the updated platform. Some information did not load properly on the site, even though it had been successfully tested before, she said, and some students failed to enter the platform. Eric J. Po ’17, for example, said he “got a lot more error pages” when trying to access CARAT this year.

“[Harvard University Information Technology] has been incredible throughout and has been responding to these [glitches],” Swift said. “There were issues over the course of the launch, which I think can happen in any launch.”

Even with the starting troubles, Swift said she thinks the updates will be worth it in the end.

According to Gregory A. Llacer, director of the College’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, CARAT is used for 123 awards across more than 60 funding departments, including the Office of Career Services. Officials from OCS received student complaints about the system when it rolled out; Po, who applied for summer funding from OCS for one of the Harvard Summer School programs, was among them.

“We had emails and visits from many students asking if their applications were all right,” OCS Director Robin Mount said. “But no one’s application was deeply affected.”

According to Llacer, as of Thursday, there were 4,823 users of CARAT, based on the number of discrete IP addresses used to enter the platform. Their platform has seen 19,497 sessions resulting in 113,106 page views and 2,837 applications submitted, according to Llacer.

—Staff writer Kamara A. Swaby can be reached at kamara.swaby@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @SwabyK.