Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence(TARE)

Overview

About TARE

One number decides this scheme, and it is not the money. A teacher who spends fewer than 90 days of the year inside the host institution is not paid the fellowship, and the Science and Engineering Research Board will not sanction a TARE proposal that drops the fellowship component to get around it (SERB awards and fellowships). The mentor, the grant split and the three-year clock all sit on top of that attendance condition.

TARE is a mobility scheme, not a student scholarship. It is written for a teacher who already holds a regular post in a state university, a state or private college, who has a doctorate, and who, in the government's own framing of the problem, is well trained but cannot pursue research where they teach for want of facilities, funding and guidance (Press Information Bureau). Instead of changing jobs, the teacher keeps the parent post and does the experimental work in an established public funded central institution, an IIT, IISc, an IISER, a NIT, a CSIR, ICAR or ICMR lab or a central university, preferably one close enough to commute to, under a mentor based there and on terms both institutions agree (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF).

Support runs for three years and covers life sciences, physical sciences, chemical sciences, engineering sciences, earth and atmospheric sciences and mathematical sciences, interdisciplinary work included. The Department of Science and Technology frames the point of it as pedagogy as much as publication: exposure to a serious lab is expected to come back into the classroom of the parent college (DST on science teaching).

The scheme was announced on 24 January 2018 as one of four new DST and SERB programmes, with up to 500 teacher associates to be supported (Press Information Bureau). It is now administered from the Anusandhan National Research Foundation portal, which lists TARE among the erstwhile SERB schemes, so the scheme page and the application form sit on anrfonline.in even though almost all of the published wording still says SERB (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no open TARE call at the time of writing. The ANRF scheme page carries a single line above the scheme description, that the call for proposals under this scheme will be notified soon, and no window, no closing date and no cycle for the coming year appears anywhere on it (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF).

Where the notice will appear is published; when, is not. The scheme's selection note says the call is notified through the serbonline.in and serb.gov.in websites (SERB awards and fellowships), so the announcement arrives on the portal rather than in a newspaper or on a state education website. The older SERB PRISM listing described the call as made once in a year (SERB PRISM), but that sentence sits on the legacy project site and not on the page ANRF maintains today, so it describes the rhythm the scheme used to keep rather than a commitment about the next cycle.

The first cycle is the only published measure of how much notice applicants got: the scheme was announced on 24 January 2018 and applications were invited from 1 February (Press Information Bureau). A gap that short is the argument for having the mentor, the two endorsements and the technical PDF ready before a call appears.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The clause that decides most cases is the word "regular". SERB reads it as a post that is sanctioned, or a tenure post likely to be renewed, and its published note rules out research associates, ad hoc and guest faculty, visiting scientists, consultants, project fellows and anyone whose contract is renewed every year, with the Board reserving the right to decide anything the note does not cover (SERB awards and fellowships).

Government pages disagree about the qualifying degree, and the disagreement is one of vintage rather than of substance. The scheme's current page and SERB's own answer both restrict it to a Ph.D. in science or engineering or an MS or MD in medicine, the answer adding that this is the position under revised eligibility guidelines (SERB awards and fellowships). The DST write-up that says an applicant with a masters in engineering and technology may apply carries a last-updated stamp of September 2019 at the foot of the page (DST on science teaching), and the older SERB PRISM listing that still names M.E., M.Tech, M.Pharm, MDS and M.V.Sc holders sits on a subsidiary SERB site whose copyright line stops at 2019 (SERB PRISM). A masters holder applying on the strength of those two pages is relying on wording the Board says it has revised, so the doctorate reading is the one to plan against.

The age ceiling of 45 years, relaxed by five years for SC, ST, OBC, physically challenged and women applicants, is measured on the date the application is submitted, not on the date of sanction (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF). The other half of eligibility belongs to someone else entirely: the mentor has to be an Associate Professor, a Scientist E or higher at the host institution, cannot be the applicant's own Ph.D. supervisor, and can carry only one TARE candidate at a time, though a different mentor at the same institute that awarded the doctorate is allowed (SERB awards and fellowships).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Nothing on the scheme page is headed exclusions. The disqualifiers sit instead inside the eligibility clause and the Board's answers to applicants, and they bite in three places. Money already held is the first: an applicant carrying any ongoing funded project or any fellowship on the date of submission is out, and that is not limited to DST or SERB money, although sitting as a co-investigator on someone else's project is explicitly not a bar. The host is the second, and it fails the proposal rather than the applicant, because only central institutes, national research laboratories and central universities may host, which is why a state-funded university cannot be named as the host institution. The third is a non-issue that applicants keep raising: how old an institution is does not count against it, as long as it is affiliated to UGC, AICTE or another competent government body (SERB awards and fellowships).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

There is no renewal step to apply for. The award is sanctioned once for a period not exceeding three years, and what has to be earned again each year is the fellowship instalment, which turns on the 90 day attendance certificate the host institution issues by the end of the financial year (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF). No extension provision beyond the three years is published.

What you get

Award & benefits

The Rs 60,000 is an annual figure, and reading it as a monthly one is the most common mistake made about this scheme. The launch announcement translated the same money into a monthly out-of-pocket expense of Rs 5,000 on top of what the employer already pays, and that phrasing is still being repeated (Press Information Bureau). The grant behaves differently from the fellowship: half of the Rs 5 lakh a year goes to the host institution, while the parent institute is the one that has to carry the purchases, the utilisation certificates and the statements of expenditure, and to release the teacher to work at the host (SERB awards and fellowships).

• Research fellowship of ₹60,000/- per year (in addition to the researcher’s own salary) will be provided subject to completion of a minimum of 90 days of research work per year in the host institution.
• Research grant of ₹5 lakhs per annum (50% each to host and parent institution) and overheads (as per SERB norms) will be provided.

What to prepare

Documents required

The paperwork splits into two piles, and the split is easy to miss because the scheme page lists both together. What goes in with the application is the biodata held in the portal profile, the certificate from the investigator, endorsement certificates from the heads of the parent and the host institution, the mentor's CV, category and age proof, a plagiarism undertaking, and everything the form has no field for, compressed into a single other technical document. What comes after the award is the joining report and the mandatory 90 day attendance certificate, the second of them filed at the end of the financial year (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF).

The two endorsements are what actually cost time, because the head of the host institution has no reason to sign until a mentor there has agreed to take the applicant, and that mentor's CV is a separate upload in the same set. Every certificate in the list carries its own downloadable template on the scheme page, which also states that the documents have to be PDFs in the prescribed format (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF).

Step by step

How to apply

Applications are online only, through the ANRF portal. A first time applicant registers as a new user at anrfonline.in and completes registration by clicking the verification link mailed to the address given in the form; the same registration route is what a mentor or a referee uses, so a mentor who has never worked with the portal has an account to create as well (ANRF registration guidelines). The mandatory information in the user profile has to be filled before the proposal form will open at all; the dashboard says the profile is ready for proposal submission once it is complete, and the form then asks for the qualifying degree details on its own screen (ANRF proposal submission help for TARE).

The form itself is tightly capped, so the writing has to be done before the window opens rather than inside it: a project title of up to 500 characters, an abstract of up to 3000, up to six keywords, objectives of up to 1500 characters and expected output and outcome of up to 1500 characters, with everything else pushed into the single technical PDF of not more than 10 MB (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF). A part filled form can be saved as a draft, edited or deleted; only the submit action is final (ANRF proposal submission help for TARE).

How to Track a Submitted TARE Proposal

After submission, the proposal is visible from the Proposal Submission menu, through View Submitted Proposal, or from the View button on the applicant's own dashboard. A proposal that has cleared administrative approval carries the status "Proposal Approved, Acknowledgement Pending from PI", and the approval letter also reaches the applicant by email; clicking that status opens the letter, where the awardee either accepts the approved budget or rejects it with reasons. Neither acknowledgement can be reversed once it is sent, and a rejection changes the status to "Approved Budget Not Accepted by PI", so the sanctioned budget is worth reading line by line before clicking (ANRF acceptance of approved budget).

How winners are picked

Selection process

Proposals are evaluated by peer review under SERB guidelines, and the Board describes selection as purely competitive on the scientific merit of the proposal (Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence, ANRF). Applicants from regions with few central institutes are given no weighting for that difficulty, which is worth knowing before building a case around geography.

Two things a committee does look at are within the applicant's control. The choice of host has to be justified, since no maximum distance between parent and host institution is fixed but a host closer to the parent institution may be preferred; and the mentor's expertise has to actually fit the proposed work rather than merely sit in the same broad field. A mentor may forward any number of applications, but only the strongest of them can result in a candidate working with that mentor (SERB awards and fellowships).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The 90 day requirement is more flexible than it reads. Those days may include working days, summer and winter vacations, public holidays, Saturdays and Sundays, provided the host institution permits the work and certifies the attendance by the end of the year (SERB awards and fellowships). What is not flexible is the count itself: fall short and the fellowship is not payable.

Two further conditions shape what the money can buy. The grant cannot be used to hire a project fellow, because the awardee is expected to do the research personally, and no other DST or SERB project may be taken up until the TARE project is completed. Publications are not mandated either way, but joint papers with the mentor are expected and acknowledging SERB funding in them is compulsory (SERB awards and fellowships).

Get help

Contact

Questions about the scheme rather than the software go to the two officers SERB names against TARE on its awards and fellowships page, Dr. Shashi Bhushan Pandey as programme coordinator and Dr. Shilpi Paul as programme officer (SERB awards and fellowships). A stuck registration, a failed upload or any other portal fault is a different desk: support@anrfonline.in, or 011-26552179 and 26552197, at the ANRF office in the Technology Bhawan complex on New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi 110016 (ANRF registration guidelines).

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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References

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