Before you travel
- Finalize your field safety plan and send it to the Northern Research Committee Chair.
- If you have large out-of-pocket expenses (e.g., a plane ticket), you may apply for a travel advance through the Carleton travel and expense reimbursement web site (follow the steps below for a travel expense claim, but complete a travel advance instead).
After you travel
- If you have personally incurred travel expenses, you will need to complete the following steps. If your supervisor incurred your travel expenses, they need to complete step 6.
- Get an account on the Carleton travel and expense reimbursement system (http://carleton.ca/travel) if you don’t already have one. Be sure to specify your thesis supervisor as your ‘supervisor’ in the travel system.
- Claim your expenses to the six-digit fund number and three-digit org number your supervisor tells you to.
- Make sure that you write in the travel claim comments that: “This claim is associated with NSTP-funded field research”.
- Submit your claim for your supervisor’s approval.
- Send the Northern Research Committee Chair an email with your student number, the Travel Report number, the total amount claimed, and the fund/org number that you claimed to.
- In early October, the Northern Research Committee Chair will initiate transfer of expenses equaling the current student allocation from your supervisor’s fund to the NSTP fund as reimbursement.
Notes for supervisors
- NSTP funding allocations may increase slightly over the field season if some students cancel their field work.
- Please ensure that student travel claims have NSTP-eligible expenses (see below) that equal your student’s current NSTP funding allocation (and preferably exceed it by a healthy margin).
- If your research fund has a low balance, Research Accounting will allow your student to overspend it up to the NSTP funding allocation amount (Please notify your Financial Administrator and the Northern Research Committee Chair, if this is required).
- Please keep in mind that NSTP is meant to supplement other sources of funding.
Eligible expenses
NSTP funds are to assist in defraying the additional costs attributable to northern research projects:
- transportation costs
- living expenses
- freight costs
- interpreter fees
The following are not eligible:
- research outside the NSTP’s geographical boundary;
- research unrelated to your thesis;
- student employment or field courses;
- research that does not require a sojourn in the North;
- field assistants;
- purchase of equipment;
- payment of salaries other than interpreter fees in the field; and,
- for timelines beyond that which NSTP allocates according to degree program (i.e. 1 year for thesis-based undergraduate research; 2 years for thesis-based Master’s research; and 3 years for thesis-based Doctoral research).
For more information on eligible expenses, please consult the NSTP Information Manual (refer to the Guidelines section b, p. 4-5).