Each year the Trustees, on the recommendation of the President, award Faculty Fellowships to Assistant Professors of exceptional promise, permitting them to pursue study and research of significance to their own professional development. The number awarded varies from year to year but normally will be eight. Eligibility is limited to Assistant Professors who will be in their 4th or 5th year in that rank on or before July 1 of the year the fellowship is to be taken. Fellowships may not be used during the year of a tenure review or during a terminal year. One of these Fellows will be designated the Class of 1962 Fellow.
Beginning in 1977, the Trustees initiated a program of grants for scholarly research to senior members of the faculty with the understanding that such grants normally will not be awarded to the same person more frequently than once every four years. In practice, because of the high level of competition, the normal period between awards has been eight or more years.
The purpose of this program is to provide one term of released time for senior members of the faculty who have established reputations in a given field or are venturing into a new field outside their accustomed area of study. It is expected that most applicants will seek support for research projects of unusual promise, research likely to lead to publication. In the past, six Senior Faculty Grants have been awarded each year. It should be noted that the number of applications has increased to a level which, in some years, does not permit support for more than one in six of the requests.
Faculty members wishing to apply for either of these awards should submit a statement of their plan of research and the significance of this work to their scholarly program. The description of the proposal must be limited to two pages. (It is important to remember that readers will include colleagues who are not specialists in the field of the applicant.) All applicants must fill out and return the cover sheet. If you plan to combine the fellowship/grant with a sabbatical, you must submit a separate request to the Chair for the sabbatical. A current vita, including publications, must accompany every application.
The application should be submitted to your department or program Chair who will forward it with a covering letter to the appropriate Associate Dean of the Faculty. A call for applications will be announced each fall. Please note the application deadline contained in that announcement. The Chair should indicate how the proposed absence from teaching can be accommodated within the instructional commitments of the department or program. In the case of junior Faculty Fellowships, the Chair must comment on whether the work described is, in the judgment of senior members of the department or program, worthy of support. When there are multiple applicants from a department for the junior faculty fellowships, the senior faculty should provide some relative assessments. This critical commentary is important to the deliberations of the Committee Advisory to the President. All applications will be considered by the Committee Advisory to the President at a special meeting in November or early December, at which time the Committee will act on the awards for next year.
Faculty Fellowships and Senior Faculty Grants normally include an additional sum for travel and other research expenses. In order to maximize the number of awards within existing budgetary constraints, such supplementary awards are limited to essential research costs for the proposed project and during the term of the grant. These will not exceed $700. Successful applicants will be contacted regarding these awards.
Once the fellowships have been awarded, the accounting for faculty fellowships takes place in the Fiscal Office of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. The contact person in this office for this type of account is Christine Dell'Erba. Submit all properly completed and signed travel vouchers, request for payment forms, miscellaneous income payment vouchers etc., to Christine for reimbursement.
