Frequently Asked Questions about Fellowships & Grants Application Process
Colin R. Johnson
Department of Gender Studies
Indiana University Bloomington
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Why should I apply for fellowships and research grants?
The most obvious reason to apply for fellowships and research grants is that the money and time such awards provide make it much easier to advance your scholarly work in a purposeful and efficient manner. There are, however, some less obvious ways in which fellowships and grants—particularly externally-funded fellowships and grants—can help to advance your career.
First, fellowships and grants are an important part of your curriculum vitæ. Among other things, they indicate that the significance of your research agenda has been judged favorably relative to the research agendas of your peers on a national or international level by ostensibly disinterested third parties. This kind of feedback is certainly gratifying and important when it yields a grant, but it can be just as important when it does not insofar as “negative” feedback can provide early warning that your research agenda—or perhaps merely the manner in which you are currently representing your research agenda—may need to be re-imagined or rearticulated in some way in order to make its value and significance clear to other scholars.
Second, regardless of whether or not you are awarded a particular fellowship or grant, applying for them is an excellent way to introduce yourself to senior colleagues in the field. Remember that most fellowship and grant applications are carefully reviewed by selection committees drawn from a relatively small cohort of highly accomplished scholars. Regardless of whether or not such committees choose to fund your work, getting your name out there can yield important opportunities later on in the form of referrals or invitations from individuals who remember your research agenda and who know that you have been pursuing it in earnest for some time. Conversely, one should be aware that repeatedly submitting fellowship or grant applications that are either haphazardly prepared or simply premature can mark you unfairly as someone whose research agenda shows little promise or, worse still, as someone who wastes other people’s time.
Third, most fellowship and grant applications comprise a set of documents that resemble the same set of documents that you will need to have at your disposal when you go on the academic job market. If regularly updated and revised the cover letter, research statement and CV that you prepare for a travel grant application in your second year of graduate school may eventually and relatively effortlessly evolve into the job letter, dissertation abstract and CV that you submit to a faculty search committee four years later. Also, because different funding agencies have very different priorities in terms of the kinds of scholarship that they want to support, regular participation in fellowship and grant competitions will necessarily require you to produce tailored versions of these documents, each of which represents you and your scholarship in slightly different terms. For graduates of an interdisciplinary department especially an archive of documents that are tailored in this way is a crucial resource come job search time since it allows you to quickly and easily present your work to very different constituencies in multiple fields, any of whom could very easily be able to imagine you as a valued colleague if you are able to present yourself and your scholarship in terms that make sense to them.
Finally, and by no means least importantly, fellowships and grants that are awarded to individuals also reflect well on the department or institution with which those individuals are associated. While it is not your personal responsibility to safeguard or improve the prestige of the Department of Gender Studies or Indiana University, doing so in this way does ultimately benefit you professionally in the sense that it helps to corroborate our contention that we are providing you with the most rigorous intellectual training available in the field.
One final note: fellowships and grants tend to beget other fellowships and grants. Because what is being adjudicated in the context of such competitions is a proposed research agenda rather than a finished product, fellowships and grant review committees often construe past support as evidence that your research agenda is already sufficiently mature to merit continued funding. This is obviously frustrating on some level since it does present a variation on the “chicken or the egg” problem: if having a history of fellowship or grant support is prerequisite to garnering fellowship or grant support then where does one begin? Fortunately, there are many different kinds of fellowships and grants—some small and some large—so there are many ways to enter a cycle that may otherwise seemed quite exclusive and closed. The key is to start applying for smaller, often less competitive fellowships and grants early in your graduate career so that you have precedent on your side when you finally reach the stage when it is appropriate for you to pursue more lucrative, highly competitive fellowships and grants.
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When should I apply for fellowships or research grants?
You should only consider applying for fellowships and grants when you are in a position to accept them should your application prove to be successful. This sounds obvious but it’s worth repeating. Nothing is worse than having to call an organization that has just sent out rejection letters to hundreds of highly qualified applicants to tell them that you can’t accept their money after all—because you still have coursework to complete, because your family isn’t actually able to relocate, or because they’ve offered you less money than you could earn if you accepted a full-time job instead. Such behavior epitomizes bad faith in the scholarly world and should be avoided at all costs, preferably through careful and responsible planning on your part. As a general rule, then, you should start to consider applying for fellowships and grants when you know you’re your schedule and circumstances will allow you to accept the award.
In most cases the fellowship and grant application cycle parallels the academic calendar and occurs during the year preceding the award’s tenure. For example, most applications for fellowship or grant support during the 2008-09 academic year will need to be submitted for consideration in 2007-08. Although specific deadlines vary widely throughout the year November, December and January deadlines are the most common by far. Competitions for smaller awards such as library travel grants may have multiple fixed deadlines throughout the year or no firm deadline at all. Larger fellowship and grant applications that are subject to a multi-layered review process may be due as early as August, an entire calendar year before they are to begin. For example, some of the fellowships awarded by the US Student Fulbright program are administered on this schedule. Additionally, some fellowship and grant competitions, though annual, are governed by changing themes or very specific search priorities that differ from one year to the next. Thus an applicant whose research agenda might make them very competitive for funding this year could very easily land at the bottom of the list in precisely the same fellowship competition next year, simply because the competition’s governing theme has changed.
Bottom line: plan ahead. In fact, you should probably start researching funding options and making initial plans regarding your application strategy anywhere from twelve to eighteen months before you are likely to be able accept a major fellowship or grant. And even if you are not in need of external funding at the moment, spend some time familiarizing yourself with the terms and conditions of different fellowship and grant competitions to which you may apply in the future. Pay close attention to the kinds of application materials that each competition requires and make note of when these materials are due each year. Make a provisional multi-year funding plan, particularly for the years following your qualifying exams since that is the period during which you’ll likely have the greatest need for external support and the greatest flexibility to accept it should your applications prove to be successful. Finally, never put all of your eggs in one basket. While it is by no means uncommon for a well prepared applicant to win a fellowship and grant competition on their first attempt, it is also not atypical for applicants to have to apply several years in a row before the stars align in their favor.
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As a graduate student in the Department of Gender Studies, am I a viable applicant?
Yes, absolutely. Graduate students in the Department of Gender are as viable as applicants as graduate students in any other department or program on campus. In fact, there is very good reason to believe that graduate students in our department may actually be particularly strong applicants for many fellowships and grants simply because they are associated with a degree program that is largely unique and that has received considerable national attention over the past few years.
Of course there are some strategic considerations that all graduate students in interdisciplinary programs need to keep in mind when applying for fellowships and grants. On the one hand, being able to claim that one’s training and scholarship are interdisciplinary in nature opens up all sorts of opportunities that are typically not available to students who are closely associated with traditional disciplines. Whereas a graduate student in, say, history might be limited to granting agencies that support onsite archival research, students in the Department of Gender Studies can apply to any fellowship or grant competitions that are willing to support research on gender-related themes and topics as long as their research agenda can be articulated in terms that make sense to the sponsoring agency or organization.
On the other hand, organizations that are accustomed to awarding fellowships or grants to students from a single discipline may think twice before extending their support to students working in fields that are unfamiliar to them. While most scholars today claim to value interdisciplinary research on some level, such claims sometimes fail to translate into unqualified support from disciplinarily-trained members of grant or fellowship committees who may fall back on familiar disciplinary conventions when asked to evaluate the relative merit of dozens of competing proposals.
With this in mind, it’s very important that you be able to explain their projects in different terms to different constituencies. This is not to say that you need to imagine your work as being a simple compilation of disciplinary endeavors; nor is it to suggest that you should ever distort the nature of your project by claiming that it is more strictly disciplinary than it is. But it is to say that you will be benefit enormously from being able to recast your work in different frameworks.
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What are the typical components of a fellowship application or grant proposal?
Most fellowship applications require the following components:
An Application Form
An Updated Curriculum Vita
A Personal Statement or Project Proposal (typically 2-10 pages)
Letters of Recommendation (usually between 2-4)
Some applications also require one or more of the following components:
A Cover Letter
A Budget Proposal
An Academic Transcript or Letter of Enrollment Certification
A Bibliography of Relevant Sources
A Sample of Scholarly Writing
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There isn’t much to say about these. You’ve been filling them out for years and you’ll be filling them out for years to come. Perhaps the only advice worth offering here is that it really does make sense to type these whenever possible. Although hand written application forms communicate information perfectly well, they can look sloppy, amateurish and hastily done relative to others that are neatly and professionally prepared. Many fellowship programs now provide these forms as pre-formatted Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF documents. Whenever possible, download the forms and make your edits directly in the files. If this is not possible, you are welcome to use the department’s typewriter which is located next to the copy machine.
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The term curriculum vitæ is Latin and means “course of life.” The vita, or CV, is probably the most commonly used professional tool in academia so you might as well just go ahead and create one if you haven’t already because you’re going to need it.
A few words of advice where the CV is concerned: first, keep your CV up-to-date and maintain one version of the document that is absolutely exhaustive. Every time you teach a new class, publish something, win a fellowship or award, or present a paper at a conference, just add it to the appropriate section of your CV. This is the easiest way to keep track of your accomplishments and it will save you a great deal of time and frustration in the future.
Second, maintain a shorter version of your vita that only includes highlights. Many fellowship competitions request two or three page vitas since full length CVs can be quite long and include information that is of little or no interest to granting agencies.
Third, consider tailoring your vita for particular fellowship or grant competitions. If you have maintained an exhaustive version simply make a copy of the document and then reword or delete any entries that may confuse fellowship selection committees. This is particularly important when you are applying to granting organizations that may not be accustomed to receiving applications from people in interdisciplinary programs or departments.
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The Personal Statement or Project Proposal
The personal statement or project proposal is arguably the most important part of any fellowship or grant application. In addition to glancing over the CV, skimming the personal statement or project proposal is usually the first thing that evaluators will do to get a sense of who the applicant is and what they propose to do. For better or worse, it is not at all uncommon for reviewers to make their decision about whether or not a proposal should be advanced for further consideration or “weeded out” based on little more than the coherence and simple readability of the first few pages—or even the first few paragraphs—of a personal statement or project proposal. With this is mind, it obviously behooves you to make sure that your personal statement or project proposal reads easily and arrives at its point quickly.
Beyond these two qualities, It is very difficult to speak with any degree of uniformity about what makes a good personal statement or project proposal since that ultimately depends on a number of factors, many of which are highly contingent upon the specific nature of fellowship or grant program to which you are applying. One quality that is characteristic of almost all successful statements or proposals is relevance and responsiveness—which is to say that the statement or proposal speaks directly to any specific questions or charges posed by the granting organization. Beyond this, however, there are a number of different elements that you might want to consider including in a personal statement or project proposal if they seem relevant and appropriate.
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A paragraph in which you clearly and concisely identify a particular conceptual problem, deficiency in the existing scholarship, methodological failing, or current scholarly debate and outline what precisely would be at stake in an intellectual sense should such an issue be allowed to go unresolved or unaddressed.
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A paragraph in which you explain how and why your research promises to resolve the problem, rectifying the deficiency, innovate methodologically, or intervene in the debate in a way that will to improve upon the state of knowledge, generally or specifically.
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A paragraph in which you explain how your formal academic training helped you identify the scholarly problem you seek to resolve or address through the research you are proposing to do, as well some discussion of how your training has prepared you to work effectively and efficiently toward that goal.
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A paragraph in which you demonstrate some knowledge of the granting organization’s mission or unique resources and explain how your research agenda coincides with that mission or would be significantly improved by having sustained access to those resources.
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A paragraph describing your funding history and explaining why the fellowship or grant you are applying for would be particularly beneficial at this juncture in your graduate career. Keep in mind that you can “spin” this point in many ways. For example, if you haven’t had the opportunity to apply for funding before, or if you’ve been unsuccessful in previous attempts, you can
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A paragraph of paragraphs addressing any specific issues identified in the application instructions. Some examples of the kind of specific information that fellowship or grant programs often request that applicants address in their statements or proposals include: a carefully planned research timeline or projection of how much work you intend to accomplish over the duration of the fellowship or grant period; some indication of what the research will yield (an article, a book or book chapter, a completed dissertation, etc.); the name of a particular person within the granting organization who might serve as a sponsor, institutional host, professional mentor or research advisor; a preferred date on which you would like the fellowship or grant period to begin; or a statement guaranteeing that you will have achieved a specific academic milestone such as candidacy prior to beginning of the award period.
As always, it is crucially important that anything you submit be carefully proof-read and copy edited, as well as fundamentally truthful. It is important that you scrupulously observe any provisions regarding format, citation style or minimum and maximum length stipulated in the application instructions. Barring specific directives where this last matter is concerned, you should assume that shorter is generally better. While it is very important that say whatever you need to in order to help reviewers understand what your research is about and why it matters, it is equally important to avoid annoying them by wasting their time with pages of unnecessary or irrelevant prose that fails to get to the point quickly and efficiently. Remember, most fellowship and grant programs receive far more applications or proposals than they can possibly fund. As such, the first stage of the review process almost always involves a certain amount of “weeding” whereby committees attempt to cut the pool in size by half or more so that they can give the remaining proposals more nuanced attention. Needless to say, statements or proposals that are excessive in length, overly subtle or rambling rarely make it to the second round of review.
One final bit advice: have other people read your personal statement or project proposal before submitting it to a fellowship or grant competition. Advisors and other faculty mentors are always good readers since they have experience with this aspect of the profession. But your fellow graduate students can also provide valuable feedback, even if they are in other departments or programs.
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How should I ask members of the faculty for letters of recommendation?
You should never feel as if asking members of the faculty for letters of recommendation is an imposition; writing such letters is one of their professional responsibilities and they are very accustomed to supporting students in this way. At the same time it is also important for you to understand that faculty members are ethically obligated to write letters that are candid and accurate. Consequently it makes little sense for you to ask someone for a letter if you haven’t worked with them in any meaningful way or if you know that you did substandard work for them when you did. Such things have a way of coming out in letters, either implicitly or explicitly, and there is no advantage for anyone in letters that are supportive but vague, generally tepid or riddled with lingering concerns or serious reservations.
There are four things that you can do to ensure that you receive the best letters possible. First, choose appropriate recommenders. These are people who know you, know your work and have a personal investment in your professional success. At the pre-candidacy stage this would include your faculty advisor, instructors of courses in which you feel you’ve performed particularly well, the Director of Graduate Studies and/or the Department Chair. This could also include faculty for whom you have taught if the fellowship or grant for which you are applying has something to do with teaching or if the selection committee will be considering something as general as your “professional promise” or the likelihood that you will significant contributions to the field. At the candidacy stage this would include your dissertation chair, other members of your committee, and other members of the faculty with whom you have had particularly long-standing intellectual and professional relationships. Remember, faculty can only speak about you in the contexts in which they have known you so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to ask someone who has never seen you teach to write a letter attesting to your excellence as an instructor. Similarly, it doesn’t make much sense to ask someone who has never read your work to write a letter explaining why it is important.
Second, plan ahead! Like you, faculty members are very busy. While they are obligated to write for you when it is appropriate for them to do so they are not obligated to write for you on a moment’s notice. Writing good letters of support takes time. In the best case scenario a letter requested on extremely short notice will be brief and probably a little vague. In the worst case scenario it will be formulaic, hastily written and possibly even a bit unflattering if the recommender feels that you have been unreasonably demanding of them.
Third, ask for letters of recommendation; don’t demand them. Even more importantly ask for letters in a way that will leave both you and the recommender feeling completely comfortable. Among other things this means asking for letters in a way that creates some room for an ambivalent or reluctant recommender to disclose honestly any reservations they may have or simply to decline graciously. Rather than asking someone if they can write a letter on your behalf, ask them if they feel they could write a positive letter on your behalf, or a positive letter that speaks specifically to your skill and promise as a researcher or teacher. If the answer is yes then it obviously makes sense to proceed by asking them if they would be willing to do so. If the person you have approached expresses reservations, or if their answer is simply no, it is in your best interest to listen to their concerns or respect their decision because they’re actually doing you a favor. As mentioned above, nothing discredits an application faster than a letter of “recommendation” that expresses serious concerns or unresolved reservations about the applicant. In addition to contravening the basic purpose of the genre—which is to corroborate in whatever way possible the claims you yourself have made about the importance and excellence of your work—such letters understandably raise serious questions about your judgment since you are presumably responsible for having solicited the document in the first place.
Finally, provide recommenders who do agree to write on your behalf with as much information as you possibly can as promptly as you possibly can. In the case of fellowship and grant applications this should include as much of the completed application that you intend to submit as you can provide in as polished a form as possible. There are two reasons for this. First, supplying your recommenders with a completed application will help them write strong letters that advocate your candidacy in the most specific terms possible. In most cases this means writing a letter that corroborates your application rather than a letter that merely accompanies it. Second, providing recommenders with this information sends a clear message that you are serious about applying for the fellowship or grant and that you are fully prepared to do so. Finally, providing recommenders with a draft of your application will give them an opportunity to provide valuable feedback that could help you improve your application. Many recommenders won’t consider it their place to do this unless they are asked to, so be sure to ask for feedback on your application materials if that is something that you would like.
Bottom line: it is unreasonable and highly unprofessional to ask someone else to carve time out of their busy schedule to write a detailed letter on your behalf if you can’t even find the time in your schedule to give them what they need to do so easily and effectively.
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When should I ask members of the faculty for letters of recommendation?
Ideally, you should provide recommenders with your materials at least a month in advance of a deadline. This is particularly true the first time you ask someone to write on your behalf since your recommender will be writing their letter from scratch. Over time recommenders who write for you often will develop a template letter which they can simply update or tailor for particular purposes. Initially, though, recommenders will need some time to review your materials carefully, ask you questions if they have any, and then craft a letter that is both economical and effective.
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What is a dossier and credential service and should I consider using one?
Dossier and credential services are third party agencies that maintain credential files on behalf of individuals. This is how they work. Rather than asking recommenders to write a new letter each time you apply for a fellowship, grant, or job, you simply ask recommenders to write one general letter at the beginning of the fellowship or job search cycle. This letter is then sent directly to the dossier or credential service. The service archives the letter in your file along with other letters written on your behalf. In addition to letters, some services allow subscribers to deposit other frequently requested materials such as academic transcripts, CVs, general research statements, teaching portfolios, portfolios of creative work and writing samples. When fellowship or job search committees request letters, subscribers simply contact the dossier or credential service and direct it to send all or part of their file to the appropriate recipient. The downside is that you will be charged a small fee each time you make such a request. The upside is that you have immediate and unfettered access to all of the supplementary materials you will need to apply for most fellowships, grants and academic jobs. Additionally, because these services allow subscribers to waive their right to see materials deposited by recommenders in their name, letters can be deposited with dossier or credential services without compromising their integrity as candid and confidential recommendations.
There are many different services dossier and/or credential services which you may want consider but two are particularly relevant for graduate students in the Department of Gender Studies. The first is the credential service run by the IU ED Careers office which part of the Indiana University School of Education. The second is a service called Interfolio.
Although its primary mission is to facilitate the placement of students from the School of Education, the IU ED Careers office also allows undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences to establish and maintain credential files under its auspices. The credentials service of the IU Ed Careers office has the advantage of being directly associated with Indiana University, plus it is located on the Bloomington campus which makes it easy to use in some respects. Unfortunately, the service is quite restrictive in terms of the amount of material that one may deposit. Additionally, clients who maintain files that exceed seven pages in length are charged a graduated fee depending upon the file’s length each time it is sent out.
Interfolio is another option. Although it is a commercial service, it is widely used within the profession. Unlike the IU ED Careers service which will only accept letters, Interfolio allows service subscribers to upload pretty much anything to their account including CVs, writing samples, teaching portfolios, etc. Interfolio also has the advantage of maintaining of robust web interface through which subscribers can upload new materials directly to their file, manage their file’s content, and select specific items to be sent to individual recipients. Interfolio will also send materials electronically in .pdf format, which can be quite useful.
The IU ED Careers office within the Indiana University School of Education
Interfolio
Make no mistake—the self-directed use of letters housed with a dossier or credential service can never and should never replace the sustained advocacy and support of your advisors. At the same time maintaining a carefully assembled and well managed dossier file can provide you with a certain amount of freedom to pursue a broad range of opportunities that exist for students at various stages in their graduate careers.
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If a fellowship or grant competition requires that you submit an application form and project statement then sending a detailed cover letter is probably unnecessary. That said, it is certainly always permissible to include a very brief cover letter in which you clearly identify the fellowship or grant for which you are applying and thank members of the selection committee in advance for considering your application. Small courtesies like this require very little time or effort on your part and they can help to give your application a finished, professional look.
Occasionally fellowship or grant competitions will request that you submit a cover letter in lieu of an application form and/or project statement. If the granting agency specifies what should be addressed in the letter, be sure to speak to those issues in a thorough yet succinct fashion. If the granting agency does not specify what should be covered in the letter, consider using the following “formula” which includes some the same points typically outlined in a personal statement or project proposal:
Begin by identifying the fellowship or grant for which you are applying. Follow this with a short paragraph in which you introduce yourself and provide relevant biographical information including what academic degrees you hold, what academic degree you are pursuing, and what kind of research project you are currently undertaking (e.g., a thesis or dissertation, revision to a seminar paper for eventual publication, etc). You may also want to include a sentence naming the faculty with whom you are studying if those people are particularly well known in the field.
In the second paragraph, briefly outline the state of existing knowledge where your topic or area of research interest is concerned. Additionally, make note of the ways in which you believe this existing knowledge is flawed or simply incomplete. In other words, try to establish the need for additional research on your topic.
In the third paragraph, explain your research agenda or methodological approach to this topic or area of inquiry and describe how it stands to revise or expand existing knowledge.
In the fourth paragraph, explain how the particular fellowship or grant for which you are applying will help to advance your work. If you are applying for a residential fellowship or grant—one that is meant to facilitate institutional access—be sure to speak in some detail about how you intend to make use of that institution’s archives, collections, or other resources. If you are applying for a non-residential fellowship or grant—one that is primarily intended to support research of a particular kind or research on particular topics—explain how your work will help to advance the granting agency or organization’s mission.
Conclude your cover letter with a final paragraph in which you recognize the importance of the agency, organization or institution to which you are applying and express your sincere enthusiasm about the prospect of contributing to its mission through your research and writing.
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Preparing a budget proposal can be a very simple task or an extremely complicated one depending upon the nature of the fellowship or grant for which you are applying. Generally speaking, fellowships and grants that are supported with state or federal tax dollars have the most demanding preliminary budgeting requirements and are governed by the most stringent reporting and accountability standards. The best thing to do if you are applying for a fellowship or grant that requires a budget proposal is to seek guidance from a faculty member who has experience with sponsoring agency or organization.
The Academic Transcript or Letter of Certification
As a rule, the more general the fellowship or grant program the more likely it is that a granting agency will ask for an academic transcript. There are two things that you can do to make this easier. First, make sure that you keep a copy of your academic transcript from every institution that you have attended. Although most organizations that request transcripts will want official copies sent directly to them, some organizations will accept photocopies in a pinch. Second, make sure that you are familiar with the procedure for requesting transcripts from each of the institutions you have attended. Some institutions provide this service free of charge and process requests very quickly. Other institutions charge a fee and take several weeks to mail out documents. Most institutions charge a sizeable fee for expedited handling or overnight delivery so it is in your interest to have some sense of how long such requests may take and what kind of fees are involved. At Indiana University, official transcripts may be requested in person, by mail, by fax, or online.
Sometimes fellowship or grant programs will require a letter of certification verifying particular facts such as your enrollment status, your academic standing (ie whether or not you have advanced to candidacy) or a reasonable assurance that you will have achieved a particular milestone by a certain date. Typically, the department Chair, Director of Graduate Studies or your advisor/dissertation committee Chair can provide you with this documentation.
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The Bibliography of Relevant Sources
Relatively few fellowship programs in the humanities or social sciences require this, but it is not at all uncommon in the sciences. If a granting agency does request a bibliography of relevant sources it will usually specify the appropriate scope and parameters.
The Scholarly Writing Sample
Most fellowship and grant competitions require that applicants submit some kind of writing sample. In general, granting organizations will want to see between ten and twenty-five pages of polished scholarly work. It is obviously desirable if the writing sample you submit has something to do with the research you intend to do during the fellowship or grant period, but this is typically not required. In fact, you should be careful to avoid submitting work that might be mistaken for a completed or nearly completed version of the project you are proposing. Regardless of what you choose to submit, the work should be quite polished and immaculately copy-edited. Excerpts from longer works are usually acceptable, but if you choose to submit an excerpt it is often helpful to preface it with a short paragraph describing the overarching claim of the piece from which it is taken.
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– Always make a copy of your completed application before submitting it. Retain this copy for your records. Also retain copies of any correspondence with the granting agency or organization.
– Be very attentive to deadlines. Be sure to note whether deadlines indicate the postmark date or the date by which all materials must be received. If you miss a deadline contact the agency or organization as soon as possible to let them know that your materials are on the way. You may also want to ask whether or not it would be possible for you to email or fax materials.
– Do not submit materials more than a month in advance of an established deadline. Doing so only increases the likelihood that your materials will be misplaced by staff who may not be prepared to receive and process applications months in advance. Submitting materials that early could also give reviewers the opportunity to scrutinize your application much more carefully than others in the pool. There could be advantages to this, but on balance those advantages are are probably outweighed by the potential hazards.
– Make sure that all of the materials you submit as part of your application are carefully and professionally prepared. Everything should be typed and meticulously proof-read. Materials should be consistently formatted and printed in a legible font, preferably something conventional like 12-point Times New Roman. If you are including a cover letter, use department letterhead. When mailing materials, use one of the department’s large flat envelopes and pay the extra postage so that your pages won’t have creases all over them when they arrive at their destination. When providing contact information, use your IUB email address and consider listing the department as your mailing address if you check your mailbox regularly. These things may seem silly or unimportant, but they really do matter. Remember, fellowships and grants are typically not scholarships intended to subsidize your education; they are significant financial investments in professional research. As such you want to do everything in your power to present yourself as a competent, qualified professional who is directly affiliated with a reputable research university.
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Where can I find information about fellowship and grant opportunities?
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Indiana University GradGrants
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online
What kinds of fellowships and research grants are available?
Internally Funded Multi-Year Graduate Fellowships
Most graduate student funding at Indiana University is generated through paid assistantships of one sort or another. These include teaching assistantships, research assistantships and administrative assistantships. The Department of Gender Studies also awards one first-year fellowship to an incoming student each year. Additionally some internally funded multi-year graduate fellowship programs do exist. These fellowship programs are administered on a campus-wide basis and are therefore extremely competitive. In most cases internally funded multi-year graduate fellowship packages include a significant teaching obligation, though they also carry a multi-year funding guarantee. Awards are typically made when students are admitted to the University, usually as a result of departmental nomination.
Graduate Scholars Fellowship Program
Graduate Women in Science Fellowship Program
McNair Graduate Fellowship Program
Adam W. Herbert Graduate Fellowship Program
Educational Opportunity Fellowship Program
Internally Funded One-Time Graduate Fellowships and Awards
In addition to the fellowship programs listed above Indiana University also sponsors a handful of fellowships and awards for students who are currently enrolled. The most important of these for the largest number of students is the Grant-in-Aid program which provides a up to $1000.00 per academic year to help defray “unusual expenses incurred in connection with doctoral dissertation research, such as travel to special libraries or laboratories, payments to consultants, specialized equipment, and duplication of vital materials needed for writing the dissertation.” Note that the Grant-in-Aid does not support expenses associated with “typing and duplicating of dissertations, normal living expenses, routine laboratory supplies, and computers.” Also of note is the Wells Graduate Fellowship program which awards one $30,000 fellowship per year. The Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship program is another excellent pre-professional opportunity.
Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship Program (FFTF)
Grant-in-Aid Program
The Esther Kinsely Master’s Thesis Award
The Esther Kinsley PhD Thesis Award
The Wells Graduate Fellowship Program
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Externally Funded Multi-Year Graduate Fellowships
Externally-funded multi-year graduate fellowships are generally sponsored by federal agencies or philanthropic organizations and are typically awarded through a separate competition during the same year that one applies for admission to an eligible graduate program. Occasionally eligibility extends through the first year of graduate study. These awards range considerably in size from a small annual subvention to rather lucrative packages that include full tuition and a sizeable annual stipend of $20,000 or more. Similarly, they range in duration from one or two years to five or more assuming adequate progress toward the degree. Unfortunately, these programs have become increasingly scarce in recent years as once major funders like the Mellon Foundation have withdrawn their support from higher education at this level and redistributed it upward into institutionally-administered teaching postdoc programs. Nevertheless, you should examine these fellowship programs carefully to determine whether or not you are eligible. If so, you should seriously consider submitting an application.
The American Indian Graduate Center Scholars Program
The Ford Foundation and the National Academies
The Jacob K. Javits Fellowship (Students in Gender Studies are currently ineligible)
The Point Foundation for LGBT Scholars
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Institutionally Sponsored Travel and Short-Term Research Grants
In the United States especially, individuals at every stage in their academic careers are fortunate to be able to seek financial support for their research from a vast array of organizations dedicated to furthering scholarly inquiry. Some of these organizations, like the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art, are publically owned and supported. Others, like The Newberry Library in Chicago or the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, are private non-profit organizations founded by extremely wealthy philanthropists and held in trust for the benefit of the people of the United States and the world. Regardless of whether they are public or private all such institutions have some vested interest in supporting scholarly use of their archives, collections or facilities. As such it is usually makes sense when applying for funding from these organizations to do some research on the institution’s mission and resources so that you can clearly explain in your statement how you would make use of those resources if granted an award. This information is especially important to agencies and organizations that receive public funds since they are often called upon by legislators and others to justify the relevance and importance of the collections and facilities they maintain.
The American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA)
The American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, PA)
The Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
The Joan Heller-Diane Bernard Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies (New York, NY)
The CLAGS Fellowship at CUNY (New York, NY)
The William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (Ann Arbor, MI)
The Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE)
The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College (Northampton, MA)
The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (Hyde Park, NY)
Institutionally Sponsored Pre-Doctoral Fellowships and Long-Term Research Grants
Like institutionally sponsored travel and short-term research grants, institutionally sponsored pre-doctoral fellowships and long-term research grants are funded by organizations that have a particular interest in facilitating access to their collections or facilities. As such many require onsite residency during the duration of the fellowship period. Long-term research grants tend to range in duration from one month to six months or more. Pre-doctoral fellowships are typically one academic year in length, though some are renewable under certain circumstances. The list below represents only a handful of the institutionally sponsored pre-doctoral and long-term research grants that exist.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (New Haven, CT)
The John Carter Brown Library (Providence, RI)
The Cullman Center at the New York Public Library (New York, NY)
The Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC)
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas (Austin, TX)
The Library Company (Philadelphia, PA)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY)
National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (Washington, DC)
National Holocaust Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (Washington, DC)
The Newberry Library (Chicago, IL)
The Huntington Library (San Marino, CA)
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (Washington, DC)
The Kluge Center at the Library of Congress (Washington, DC)
The Getty Museum and Foundation (Los Angeles, CA)
The Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History (New York, NY)
The Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC)
The Winterthur Museum and Country Estate (Winterthur, DE)
The Women’s Research and Education Institute (Washington, DC)
ACLS Administered Fellowships and Grants
SSRC Administered Fellowships and Grants
External Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowships
The American Association of University Women (Washington, DC)
The Spencer Foundation (Chicago, IL)
The Woodrow Wilson Foundation (Princeton, NJ)
Federally Funded Fellowships and Grants
The Fulbright Program for US Students
The National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Institutes of Health
The National Science Foundation
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Post-Doctoral Research Fellowships
Traditionally, post-doctoral fellowships provided newly minted PhDs with one or more years of financial and institutional support to pursue highly specialized academic training or research without the teaching and administrative responsibilities that come with a faculty appointment. Because they often originated as fixed-term line-item components of large federally-funded research grants these fellowships were especially common in the natural, physical and medical sciences. In recent years, however, some post-doctoral opportunities for scholars in the humanities and social sciences have emerged. Although they are often less lucrative than tenure-track faculty appointments post-doctoral fellowships do have much to recommend them. First, they provide fellows with valuable opportunities to work with new peers and colleagues at a different institution. Second, they often entail direct involvement in major research initiatives that are intended to assemble the most promising scholars working on a particular theme or problem. Finally, for newly minted PhDs who have not yet accepted a permanent position, they help to mitigate the pressures of the tenure process by effectively extending the tenure clock by one or more years.
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowships
Unlike traditional post-doctoral fellowships which typically carry no teaching obligations because they are intended exclusively to facilitate subsequent research and/or highly specialized academic training, “teaching postdocs” demand some instructional labor from fellows in exchange for a modest salary and access to basic institutional resources like libraries, office space and, most importantly, time to do research and write. Fellowships of this sort have become extremely popular in recent years because they represent a mutually beneficial arrangement for both under-staffed colleges and university and under-employed PhDs, particularly PhDs in the humanities and social sciences. There are some teaching postdocs out there that carry a 2-2 teaching load—or even a 3-3 teaching load—and these hardly deserve the name since they are essentially full-time teaching appointments that differ very little from adjunct or visiting professorships. There are others, however, that truly are good deals for everyone involved. This is often especially true of institutionally-based postdoctoral fellowship societies which tend to offer multi-year appointments and which also tend to house fellows in interdisciplinary research institutes. Typically, post-doctoral teaching fellowships of this sort require that fellows teach only one or two courses per year leaving them free in the remainder of their time to do research and writing and to participate in the intellectual life of the institute with which they are affiliated. Here are some examples of particularly lucrative and prestigious post-doctoral teaching fellowship programs that operate on these basic principles:
The Harvard University Society of Fellows (Cambridge, MA)
The University of Michigan Society of Fellows (Ann Arbor, MI)
The Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities (New York, NY)
The University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (Berkeley, CA)
The University of Chicago Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts (Chicago, IL)
The Stanford University Humanities Fellows Program (Palo Alto, CA)
The Princeton University Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts (Princeton, NJ)
In addition to these programs which are relatively old and well established, many colleges and universities compete to serve as host institutions for foundation-sponsored post-doctoral fellowships. Most well known of these are the institutionally-based Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These post-doctoral fellowship programs are sometimes difficult to find out about because they are dispersed quite widely and different institutions advertise them in very different venues. Still a simple web search for “Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship” will yield many results in any given year.
Other Opportunities
In addition to fellowships and grants that are intended to support independent scholarly research at the pre-doctoral level there are many other opportunities for graduate students to gain valuable research experience and specialized academic training. These opportunities include inter-university exchange programs, workshops and symposia, specialized language training programs, topical or thematic summer schools and pre-professional internships to name just a few examples. While almost none of these programs are profit-making enterprises most do charge some kind of tuition or fee. Moreover, since most of these programs strive to keep costs as low as possible for all participants only a handful offer competitive scholarships or grants to help defray the cost of attending. This should not necessarily dissuade you from applying. Remember that it is much easier to make a compelling argument for a one-time grant or other supplementary assistance if you can demonstrate an obvious and urgent need for it. In the case of something like the School of Criticism and Theory, then, you are far more likely to be able to raise a thousand dollars from one source and five hundred dollars from another if you have an acceptance letter in hand.
Committee on Institutional Cooperation Programs - FLEP, Travelling Scholars Program
School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
The Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture and Society at Universiteit van Amsterdam (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
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Gender Studies
Indiana University
Memorial Hall E., 130
Bloomington, IN * 47403
(812) 855-0101
(812) 855-4869 (fax)
gender@indiana.edu
Important Links
Page Links
Why should I apply?
When Should I apply?
Am I a Viable Cadidate?
Typical Components of App./Grant
Application Form
CV
Personal Statement
Letters of Recommendation
Dossier Service
Cover Letter
Budget Proposal
Transcript
Bibliography
Writing Sample
General Advice
Where do I Look?
What is Available?
Internally Funded
Externally Funded
Travel Grants
Pre-doctoral Grants
Post-doctoral Fellowships
Post-doctoral Teaching
Other Opportunities
Frequently Asked Questions about Fellowships & Grants Application Process
Colin R. Johnson
Department of Gender Studies
Indiana University Bloomington
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Why should I apply for fellowships and research grants?
The most obvious reason to apply for fellowships and research grants is that the money and time such awards provide make it much easier to advance your scholarly work in a purposeful and efficient manner. There are, however, some less obvious ways in which fellowships and grants—particularly externally-funded fellowships and grants—can help to advance your career.
First, fellowships and grants are an important part of your curriculum vitæ. Among other things, they indicate that the significance of your research agenda has been judged favorably relative to the research agendas of your peers on a national or international level by ostensibly disinterested third parties. This kind of feedback is certainly gratifying and important when it yields a grant, but it can be just as important when it does not insofar as “negative” feedback can provide early warning that your research agenda—or perhaps merely the manner in which you are currently representing your research agenda—may need to be re-imagined or rearticulated in some way in order to make its value and significance clear to other scholars.
Second, regardless of whether or not you are awarded a particular fellowship or grant, applying for them is an excellent way to introduce yourself to senior colleagues in the field. Remember that most fellowship and grant applications are carefully reviewed by selection committees drawn from a relatively small cohort of highly accomplished scholars. Regardless of whether or not such committees choose to fund your work, getting your name out there can yield important opportunities later on in the form of referrals or invitations from individuals who remember your research agenda and who know that you have been pursuing it in earnest for some time. Conversely, one should be aware that repeatedly submitting fellowship or grant applications that are either haphazardly prepared or simply premature can mark you unfairly as someone whose research agenda shows little promise or, worse still, as someone who wastes other people’s time.
Third, most fellowship and grant applications comprise a set of documents that resemble the same set of documents that you will need to have at your disposal when you go on the academic job market. If regularly updated and revised the cover letter, research statement and CV that you prepare for a travel grant application in your second year of graduate school may eventually and relatively effortlessly evolve into the job letter, dissertation abstract and CV that you submit to a faculty search committee four years later. Also, because different funding agencies have very different priorities in terms of the kinds of scholarship that they want to support, regular participation in fellowship and grant competitions will necessarily require you to produce tailored versions of these documents, each of which represents you and your scholarship in slightly different terms. For graduates of an interdisciplinary department especially an archive of documents that are tailored in this way is a crucial resource come job search time since it allows you to quickly and easily present your work to very different constituencies in multiple fields, any of whom could very easily be able to imagine you as a valued colleague if you are able to present yourself and your scholarship in terms that make sense to them.
Finally, and by no means least importantly, fellowships and grants that are awarded to individuals also reflect well on the department or institution with which those individuals are associated. While it is not your personal responsibility to safeguard or improve the prestige of the Department of Gender Studies or Indiana University, doing so in this way does ultimately benefit you professionally in the sense that it helps to corroborate our contention that we are providing you with the most rigorous intellectual training available in the field.
One final note: fellowships and grants tend to beget other fellowships and grants. Because what is being adjudicated in the context of such competitions is a proposed research agenda rather than a finished product, fellowships and grant review committees often construe past support as evidence that your research agenda is already sufficiently mature to merit continued funding. This is obviously frustrating on some level since it does present a variation on the “chicken or the egg” problem: if having a history of fellowship or grant support is prerequisite to garnering fellowship or grant support then where does one begin? Fortunately, there are many different kinds of fellowships and grants—some small and some large—so there are many ways to enter a cycle that may otherwise seemed quite exclusive and closed. The key is to start applying for smaller, often less competitive fellowships and grants early in your graduate career so that you have precedent on your side when you finally reach the stage when it is appropriate for you to pursue more lucrative, highly competitive fellowships and grants.
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When should I apply for fellowships or research grants?
You should only consider applying for fellowships and grants when you are in a position to accept them should your application prove to be successful. This sounds obvious but it’s worth repeating. Nothing is worse than having to call an organization that has just sent out rejection letters to hundreds of highly qualified applicants to tell them that you can’t accept their money after all—because you still have coursework to complete, because your family isn’t actually able to relocate, or because they’ve offered you less money than you could earn if you accepted a full-time job instead. Such behavior epitomizes bad faith in the scholarly world and should be avoided at all costs, preferably through careful and responsible planning on your part. As a general rule, then, you should start to consider applying for fellowships and grants when you know you’re your schedule and circumstances will allow you to accept the award.
In most cases the fellowship and grant application cycle parallels the academic calendar and occurs during the year preceding the award’s tenure. For example, most applications for fellowship or grant support during the 2008-09 academic year will need to be submitted for consideration in 2007-08. Although specific deadlines vary widely throughout the year November, December and January deadlines are the most common by far. Competitions for smaller awards such as library travel grants may have multiple fixed deadlines throughout the year or no firm deadline at all. Larger fellowship and grant applications that are subject to a multi-layered review process may be due as early as August, an entire calendar year before they are to begin. For example, some of the fellowships awarded by the US Student Fulbright program are administered on this schedule. Additionally, some fellowship and grant competitions, though annual, are governed by changing themes or very specific search priorities that differ from one year to the next. Thus an applicant whose research agenda might make them very competitive for funding this year could very easily land at the bottom of the list in precisely the same fellowship competition next year, simply because the competition’s governing theme has changed.
Bottom line: plan ahead. In fact, you should probably start researching funding options and making initial plans regarding your application strategy anywhere from twelve to eighteen months before you are likely to be able accept a major fellowship or grant. And even if you are not in need of external funding at the moment, spend some time familiarizing yourself with the terms and conditions of different fellowship and grant competitions to which you may apply in the future. Pay close attention to the kinds of application materials that each competition requires and make note of when these materials are due each year. Make a provisional multi-year funding plan, particularly for the years following your qualifying exams since that is the period during which you’ll likely have the greatest need for external support and the greatest flexibility to accept it should your applications prove to be successful. Finally, never put all of your eggs in one basket. While it is by no means uncommon for a well prepared applicant to win a fellowship and grant competition on their first attempt, it is also not atypical for applicants to have to apply several years in a row before the stars align in their favor.
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As a graduate student in the Department of Gender Studies, am I a viable applicant?
Yes, absolutely. Graduate students in the Department of Gender are as viable as applicants as graduate students in any other department or program on campus. In fact, there is very good reason to believe that graduate students in our department may actually be particularly strong applicants for many fellowships and grants simply because they are associated with a degree program that is largely unique and that has received considerable national attention over the past few years.
Of course there are some strategic considerations that all graduate students in interdisciplinary programs need to keep in mind when applying for fellowships and grants. On the one hand, being able to claim that one’s training and scholarship are interdisciplinary in nature opens up all sorts of opportunities that are typically not available to students who are closely associated with traditional disciplines. Whereas a graduate student in, say, history might be limited to granting agencies that support onsite archival research, students in the Department of Gender Studies can apply to any fellowship or grant competitions that are willing to support research on gender-related themes and topics as long as their research agenda can be articulated in terms that make sense to the sponsoring agency or organization.
On the other hand, organizations that are accustomed to awarding fellowships or grants to students from a single discipline may think twice before extending their support to students working in fields that are unfamiliar to them. While most scholars today claim to value interdisciplinary research on some level, such claims sometimes fail to translate into unqualified support from disciplinarily-trained members of grant or fellowship committees who may fall back on familiar disciplinary conventions when asked to evaluate the relative merit of dozens of competing proposals.
With this in mind, it’s very important that you be able to explain their projects in different terms to different constituencies. This is not to say that you need to imagine your work as being a simple compilation of disciplinary endeavors; nor is it to suggest that you should ever distort the nature of your project by claiming that it is more strictly disciplinary than it is. But it is to say that you will be benefit enormously from being able to recast your work in different frameworks.
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What are the typical components of a fellowship application or grant proposal?
Most fellowship applications require the following components:
An Application Form
An Updated Curriculum Vita
A Personal Statement or Project Proposal (typically 2-10 pages)
Letters of Recommendation (usually between 2-4)
Some applications also require one or more of the following components:
A Cover Letter
A Budget Proposal
An Academic Transcript or Letter of Enrollment Certification
A Bibliography of Relevant Sources
A Sample of Scholarly Writing
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There isn’t much to say about these. You’ve been filling them out for years and you’ll be filling them out for years to come. Perhaps the only advice worth offering here is that it really does make sense to type these whenever possible. Although hand written application forms communicate information perfectly well, they can look sloppy, amateurish and hastily done relative to others that are neatly and professionally prepared. Many fellowship programs now provide these forms as pre-formatted Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF documents. Whenever possible, download the forms and make your edits directly in the files. If this is not possible, you are welcome to use the department’s typewriter which is located next to the copy machine.
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The term curriculum vitæ is Latin and means “course of life.” The vita, or CV, is probably the most commonly used professional tool in academia so you might as well just go ahead and create one if you haven’t already because you’re going to need it.
A few words of advice where the CV is concerned: first, keep your CV up-to-date and maintain one version of the document that is absolutely exhaustive. Every time you teach a new class, publish something, win a fellowship or award, or present a paper at a conference, just add it to the appropriate section of your CV. This is the easiest way to keep track of your accomplishments and it will save you a great deal of time and frustration in the future.
Second, maintain a shorter version of your vita that only includes highlights. Many fellowship competitions request two or three page vitas since full length CVs can be quite long and include information that is of little or no interest to granting agencies.
Third, consider tailoring your vita for particular fellowship or grant competitions. If you have maintained an exhaustive version simply make a copy of the document and then reword or delete any entries that may confuse fellowship selection committees. This is particularly important when you are applying to granting organizations that may not be accustomed to receiving applications from people in interdisciplinary programs or departments.
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The Personal Statement or Project Proposal
The personal statement or project proposal is arguably the most important part of any fellowship or grant application. In addition to glancing over the CV, skimming the personal statement or project proposal is usually the first thing that evaluators will do to get a sense of who the applicant is and what they propose to do. For better or worse, it is not at all uncommon for reviewers to make their decision about whether or not a proposal should be advanced for further consideration or “weeded out” based on little more than the coherence and simple readability of the first few pages—or even the first few paragraphs—of a personal statement or project proposal. With this is mind, it obviously behooves you to make sure that your personal statement or project proposal reads easily and arrives at its point quickly.
Beyond these two qualities, It is very difficult to speak with any degree of uniformity about what makes a good personal statement or project proposal since that ultimately depends on a number of factors, many of which are highly contingent upon the specific nature of fellowship or grant program to which you are applying. One quality that is characteristic of almost all successful statements or proposals is relevance and responsiveness—which is to say that the statement or proposal speaks directly to any specific questions or charges posed by the granting organization. Beyond this, however, there are a number of different elements that you might want to consider including in a personal statement or project proposal if they seem relevant and appropriate.
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A paragraph in which you clearly and concisely identify a particular conceptual problem, deficiency in the existing scholarship, methodological failing, or current scholarly debate and outline what precisely would be at stake in an intellectual sense should such an issue be allowed to go unresolved or unaddressed.
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A paragraph in which you explain how and why your research promises to resolve the problem, rectifying the deficiency, innovate methodologically, or intervene in the debate in a way that will to improve upon the state of knowledge, generally or specifically.
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A paragraph in which you explain how your formal academic training helped you identify the scholarly problem you seek to resolve or address through the research you are proposing to do, as well some discussion of how your training has prepared you to work effectively and efficiently toward that goal.
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A paragraph in which you demonstrate some knowledge of the granting organization’s mission or unique resources and explain how your research agenda coincides with that mission or would be significantly improved by having sustained access to those resources.
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A paragraph describing your funding history and explaining why the fellowship or grant you are applying for would be particularly beneficial at this juncture in your graduate career. Keep in mind that you can “spin” this point in many ways. For example, if you haven’t had the opportunity to apply for funding before, or if you’ve been unsuccessful in previous attempts, you can
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A paragraph of paragraphs addressing any specific issues identified in the application instructions. Some examples of the kind of specific information that fellowship or grant programs often request that applicants address in their statements or proposals include: a carefully planned research timeline or projection of how much work you intend to accomplish over the duration of the fellowship or grant period; some indication of what the research will yield (an article, a book or book chapter, a completed dissertation, etc.); the name of a particular person within the granting organization who might serve as a sponsor, institutional host, professional mentor or research advisor; a preferred date on which you would like the fellowship or grant period to begin; or a statement guaranteeing that you will have achieved a specific academic milestone such as candidacy prior to beginning of the award period.
As always, it is crucially important that anything you submit be carefully proof-read and copy edited, as well as fundamentally truthful. It is important that you scrupulously observe any provisions regarding format, citation style or minimum and maximum length stipulated in the application instructions. Barring specific directives where this last matter is concerned, you should assume that shorter is generally better. While it is very important that say whatever you need to in order to help reviewers understand what your research is about and why it matters, it is equally important to avoid annoying them by wasting their time with pages of unnecessary or irrelevant prose that fails to get to the point quickly and efficiently. Remember, most fellowship and grant programs receive far more applications or proposals than they can possibly fund. As such, the first stage of the review process almost always involves a certain amount of “weeding” whereby committees attempt to cut the pool in size by half or more so that they can give the remaining proposals more nuanced attention. Needless to say, statements or proposals that are excessive in length, overly subtle or rambling rarely make it to the second round of review.
One final bit advice: have other people read your personal statement or project proposal before submitting it to a fellowship or grant competition. Advisors and other faculty mentors are always good readers since they have experience with this aspect of the profession. But your fellow graduate students can also provide valuable feedback, even if they are in other departments or programs.
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How should I ask members of the faculty for letters of recommendation?
You should never feel as if asking members of the faculty for letters of recommendation is an imposition; writing such letters is one of their professional responsibilities and they are very accustomed to supporting students in this way. At the same time it is also important for you to understand that faculty members are ethically obligated to write letters that are candid and accurate. Consequently it makes little sense for you to ask someone for a letter if you haven’t worked with them in any meaningful way or if you know that you did substandard work for them when you did. Such things have a way of coming out in letters, either implicitly or explicitly, and there is no advantage for anyone in letters that are supportive but vague, generally tepid or riddled with lingering concerns or serious reservations.
There are four things that you can do to ensure that you receive the best letters possible. First, choose appropriate recommenders. These are people who know you, know your work and have a personal investment in your professional success. At the pre-candidacy stage this would include your faculty advisor, instructors of courses in which you feel you’ve performed particularly well, the Director of Graduate Studies and/or the Department Chair. This could also include faculty for whom you have taught if the fellowship or grant for which you are applying has something to do with teaching or if the selection committee will be considering something as general as your “professional promise” or the likelihood that you will significant contributions to the field. At the candidacy stage this would include your dissertation chair, other members of your committee, and other members of the faculty with whom you have had particularly long-standing intellectual and professional relationships. Remember, faculty can only speak about you in the contexts in which they have known you so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to ask someone who has never seen you teach to write a letter attesting to your excellence as an instructor. Similarly, it doesn’t make much sense to ask someone who has never read your work to write a letter explaining why it is important.
Second, plan ahead! Like you, faculty members are very busy. While they are obligated to write for you when it is appropriate for them to do so they are not obligated to write for you on a moment’s notice. Writing good letters of support takes time. In the best case scenario a letter requested on extremely short notice will be brief and probably a little vague. In the worst case scenario it will be formulaic, hastily written and possibly even a bit unflattering if the recommender feels that you have been unreasonably demanding of them.
Third, ask for letters of recommendation; don’t demand them. Even more importantly ask for letters in a way that will leave both you and the recommender feeling completely comfortable. Among other things this means asking for letters in a way that creates some room for an ambivalent or reluctant recommender to disclose honestly any reservations they may have or simply to decline graciously. Rather than asking someone if they can write a letter on your behalf, ask them if they feel they could write a positive letter on your behalf, or a positive letter that speaks specifically to your skill and promise as a researcher or teacher. If the answer is yes then it obviously makes sense to proceed by asking them if they would be willing to do so. If the person you have approached expresses reservations, or if their answer is simply no, it is in your best interest to listen to their concerns or respect their decision because they’re actually doing you a favor. As mentioned above, nothing discredits an application faster than a letter of “recommendation” that expresses serious concerns or unresolved reservations about the applicant. In addition to contravening the basic purpose of the genre—which is to corroborate in whatever way possible the claims you yourself have made about the importance and excellence of your work—such letters understandably raise serious questions about your judgment since you are presumably responsible for having solicited the document in the first place.
Finally, provide recommenders who do agree to write on your behalf with as much information as you possibly can as promptly as you possibly can. In the case of fellowship and grant applications this should include as much of the completed application that you intend to submit as you can provide in as polished a form as possible. There are two reasons for this. First, supplying your recommenders with a completed application will help them write strong letters that advocate your candidacy in the most specific terms possible. In most cases this means writing a letter that corroborates your application rather than a letter that merely accompanies it. Second, providing recommenders with this information sends a clear message that you are serious about applying for the fellowship or grant and that you are fully prepared to do so. Finally, providing recommenders with a draft of your application will give them an opportunity to provide valuable feedback that could help you improve your application. Many recommenders won’t consider it their place to do this unless they are asked to, so be sure to ask for feedback on your application materials if that is something that you would like.
Bottom line: it is unreasonable and highly unprofessional to ask someone else to carve time out of their busy schedule to write a detailed letter on your behalf if you can’t even find the time in your schedule to give them what they need to do so easily and effectively.
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When should I ask members of the faculty for letters of recommendation?
Ideally, you should provide recommenders with your materials at least a month in advance of a deadline. This is particularly true the first time you ask someone to write on your behalf since your recommender will be writing their letter from scratch. Over time recommenders who write for you often will develop a template letter which they can simply update or tailor for particular purposes. Initially, though, recommenders will need some time to review your materials carefully, ask you questions if they have any, and then craft a letter that is both economical and effective.
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What is a dossier and credential service and should I consider using one?
Dossier and credential services are third party agencies that maintain credential files on behalf of individuals. This is how they work. Rather than asking recommenders to write a new letter each time you apply for a fellowship, grant, or job, you simply ask recommenders to write one general letter at the beginning of the fellowship or job search cycle. This letter is then sent directly to the dossier or credential service. The service archives the letter in your file along with other letters written on your behalf. In addition to letters, some services allow subscribers to deposit other frequently requested materials such as academic transcripts, CVs, general research statements, teaching portfolios, portfolios of creative work and writing samples. When fellowship or job search committees request letters, subscribers simply contact the dossier or credential service and direct it to send all or part of their file to the appropriate recipient. The downside is that you will be charged a small fee each time you make such a request. The upside is that you have immediate and unfettered access to all of the supplementary materials you will need to apply for most fellowships, grants and academic jobs. Additionally, because these services allow subscribers to waive their right to see materials deposited by recommenders in their name, letters can be deposited with dossier or credential services without compromising their integrity as candid and confidential recommendations.
There are many different services dossier and/or credential services which you may want consider but two are particularly relevant for graduate students in the Department of Gender Studies. The first is the credential service run by the IU ED Careers office which part of the Indiana University School of Education. The second is a service called Interfolio.
Although its primary mission is to facilitate the placement of students from the School of Education, the IU ED Careers office also allows undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences to establish and maintain credential files under its auspices. The credentials service of the IU Ed Careers office has the advantage of being directly associated with Indiana University, plus it is located on the Bloomington campus which makes it easy to use in some respects. Unfortunately, the service is quite restrictive in terms of the amount of material that one may deposit. Additionally, clients who maintain files that exceed seven pages in length are charged a graduated fee depending upon the file’s length each time it is sent out.
Interfolio is another option. Although it is a commercial service, it is widely used within the profession. Unlike the IU ED Careers service which will only accept letters, Interfolio allows service subscribers to upload pretty much anything to their account including CVs, writing samples, teaching portfolios, etc. Interfolio also has the advantage of maintaining of robust web interface through which subscribers can upload new materials directly to their file, manage their file’s content, and select specific items to be sent to individual recipients. Interfolio will also send materials electronically in .pdf format, which can be quite useful.
The IU ED Careers office within the Indiana University School of Education
Interfolio
Make no mistake—the self-directed use of letters housed with a dossier or credential service can never and should never replace the sustained advocacy and support of your advisors. At the same time maintaining a carefully assembled and well managed dossier file can provide you with a certain amount of freedom to pursue a broad range of opportunities that exist for students at various stages in their graduate careers.
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If a fellowship or grant competition requires that you submit an application form and project statement then sending a detailed cover letter is probably unnecessary. That said, it is certainly always permissible to include a very brief cover letter in which you clearly identify the fellowship or grant for which you are applying and thank members of the selection committee in advance for considering your application. Small courtesies like this require very little time or effort on your part and they can help to give your application a finished, professional look.
Occasionally fellowship or grant competitions will request that you submit a cover letter in lieu of an application form and/or project statement. If the granting agency specifies what should be addressed in the letter, be sure to speak to those issues in a thorough yet succinct fashion. If the granting agency does not specify what should be covered in the letter, consider using the following “formula” which includes some the same points typically outlined in a personal statement or project proposal:
Begin by identifying the fellowship or grant for which you are applying. Follow this with a short paragraph in which you introduce yourself and provide relevant biographical information including what academic degrees you hold, what academic degree you are pursuing, and what kind of research project you are currently undertaking (e.g., a thesis or dissertation, revision to a seminar paper for eventual publication, etc). You may also want to include a sentence naming the faculty with whom you are studying if those people are particularly well known in the field.
In the second paragraph, briefly outline the state of existing knowledge where your topic or area of research interest is concerned. Additionally, make note of the ways in which you believe this existing knowledge is flawed or simply incomplete. In other words, try to establish the need for additional research on your topic.
In the third paragraph, explain your research agenda or methodological approach to this topic or area of inquiry and describe how it stands to revise or expand existing knowledge.
In the fourth paragraph, explain how the particular fellowship or grant for which you are applying will help to advance your work. If you are applying for a residential fellowship or grant—one that is meant to facilitate institutional access—be sure to speak in some detail about how you intend to make use of that institution’s archives, collections, or other resources. If you are applying for a non-residential fellowship or grant—one that is primarily intended to support research of a particular kind or research on particular topics—explain how your work will help to advance the granting agency or organization’s mission.
Conclude your cover letter with a final paragraph in which you recognize the importance of the agency, organization or institution to which you are applying and express your sincere enthusiasm about the prospect of contributing to its mission through your research and writing.
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Preparing a budget proposal can be a very simple task or an extremely complicated one depending upon the nature of the fellowship or grant for which you are applying. Generally speaking, fellowships and grants that are supported with state or federal tax dollars have the most demanding preliminary budgeting requirements and are governed by the most stringent reporting and accountability standards. The best thing to do if you are applying for a fellowship or grant that requires a budget proposal is to seek guidance from a faculty member who has experience with sponsoring agency or organization.
The Academic Transcript or Letter of Certification
As a rule, the more general the fellowship or grant program the more likely it is that a granting agency will ask for an academic transcript. There are two things that you can do to make this easier. First, make sure that you keep a copy of your academic transcript from every institution that you have attended. Although most organizations that request transcripts will want official copies sent directly to them, some organizations will accept photocopies in a pinch. Second, make sure that you are familiar with the procedure for requesting transcripts from each of the institutions you have attended. Some institutions provide this service free of charge and process requests very quickly. Other institutions charge a fee and take several weeks to mail out documents. Most institutions charge a sizeable fee for expedited handling or overnight delivery so it is in your interest to have some sense of how long such requests may take and what kind of fees are involved. At Indiana University, official transcripts may be requested in person, by mail, by fax, or online.
Sometimes fellowship or grant programs will require a letter of certification verifying particular facts such as your enrollment status, your academic standing (ie whether or not you have advanced to candidacy) or a reasonable assurance that you will have achieved a particular milestone by a certain date. Typically, the department Chair, Director of Graduate Studies or your advisor/dissertation committee Chair can provide you with this documentation.
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The Bibliography of Relevant Sources
Relatively few fellowship programs in the humanities or social sciences require this, but it is not at all uncommon in the sciences. If a granting agency does request a bibliography of relevant sources it will usually specify the appropriate scope and parameters.
The Scholarly Writing Sample
Most fellowship and grant competitions require that applicants submit some kind of writing sample. In general, granting organizations will want to see between ten and twenty-five pages of polished scholarly work. It is obviously desirable if the writing sample you submit has something to do with the research you intend to do during the fellowship or grant period, but this is typically not required. In fact, you should be careful to avoid submitting work that might be mistaken for a completed or nearly completed version of the project you are proposing. Regardless of what you choose to submit, the work should be quite polished and immaculately copy-edited. Excerpts from longer works are usually acceptable, but if you choose to submit an excerpt it is often helpful to preface it with a short paragraph describing the overarching claim of the piece from which it is taken.
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– Always make a copy of your completed application before submitting it. Retain this copy for your records. Also retain copies of any correspondence with the granting agency or organization.
– Be very attentive to deadlines. Be sure to note whether deadlines indicate the postmark date or the date by which all materials must be received. If you miss a deadline contact the agency or organization as soon as possible to let them know that your materials are on the way. You may also want to ask whether or not it would be possible for you to email or fax materials.
– Do not submit materials more than a month in advance of an established deadline. Doing so only increases the likelihood that your materials will be misplaced by staff who may not be prepared to receive and process applications months in advance. Submitting materials that early could also give reviewers the opportunity to scrutinize your application much more carefully than others in the pool. There could be advantages to this, but on balance those advantages are are probably outweighed by the potential hazards.
– Make sure that all of the materials you submit as part of your application are carefully and professionally prepared. Everything should be typed and meticulously proof-read. Materials should be consistently formatted and printed in a legible font, preferably something conventional like 12-point Times New Roman. If you are including a cover letter, use department letterhead. When mailing materials, use one of the department’s large flat envelopes and pay the extra postage so that your pages won’t have creases all over them when they arrive at their destination. When providing contact information, use your IUB email address and consider listing the department as your mailing address if you check your mailbox regularly. These things may seem silly or unimportant, but they really do matter. Remember, fellowships and grants are typically not scholarships intended to subsidize your education; they are significant financial investments in professional research. As such you want to do everything in your power to present yourself as a competent, qualified professional who is directly affiliated with a reputable research university.
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Where can I find information about fellowship and grant opportunities?
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Indiana University GradGrants
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online
What kinds of fellowships and research grants are available?
Internally Funded Multi-Year Graduate Fellowships
Most graduate student funding at Indiana University is generated through paid assistantships of one sort or another. These include teaching assistantships, research assistantships and administrative assistantships. The Department of Gender Studies also awards one first-year fellowship to an incoming student each year. Additionally some internally funded multi-year graduate fellowship programs do exist. These fellowship programs are administered on a campus-wide basis and are therefore extremely competitive. In most cases internally funded multi-year graduate fellowship packages include a significant teaching obligation, though they also carry a multi-year funding guarantee. Awards are typically made when students are admitted to the University, usually as a result of departmental nomination.
Graduate Scholars Fellowship Program
Graduate Women in Science Fellowship Program
McNair Graduate Fellowship Program
Adam W. Herbert Graduate Fellowship Program
Educational Opportunity Fellowship Program
Internally Funded One-Time Graduate Fellowships and Awards
In addition to the fellowship programs listed above Indiana University also sponsors a handful of fellowships and awards for students who are currently enrolled. The most important of these for the largest number of students is the Grant-in-Aid program which provides a up to $1000.00 per academic year to help defray “unusual expenses incurred in connection with doctoral dissertation research, such as travel to special libraries or laboratories, payments to consultants, specialized equipment, and duplication of vital materials needed for writing the dissertation.” Note that the Grant-in-Aid does not support expenses associated with “typing and duplicating of dissertations, normal living expenses, routine laboratory supplies, and computers.” Also of note is the Wells Graduate Fellowship program which awards one $30,000 fellowship per year. The Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship program is another excellent pre-professional opportunity.
Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship Program (FFTF)
Grant-in-Aid Program
The Esther Kinsely Master’s Thesis Award
The Esther Kinsley PhD Thesis Award
The Wells Graduate Fellowship Program
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Externally Funded Multi-Year Graduate Fellowships
Externally-funded multi-year graduate fellowships are generally sponsored by federal agencies or philanthropic organizations and are typically awarded through a separate competition during the same year that one applies for admission to an eligible graduate program. Occasionally eligibility extends through the first year of graduate study. These awards range considerably in size from a small annual subvention to rather lucrative packages that include full tuition and a sizeable annual stipend of $20,000 or more. Similarly, they range in duration from one or two years to five or more assuming adequate progress toward the degree. Unfortunately, these programs have become increasingly scarce in recent years as once major funders like the Mellon Foundation have withdrawn their support from higher education at this level and redistributed it upward into institutionally-administered teaching postdoc programs. Nevertheless, you should examine these fellowship programs carefully to determine whether or not you are eligible. If so, you should seriously consider submitting an application.
The American Indian Graduate Center Scholars Program
The Ford Foundation and the National Academies
The Jacob K. Javits Fellowship (Students in Gender Studies are currently ineligible)
The Point Foundation for LGBT Scholars
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Institutionally Sponsored Travel and Short-Term Research Grants
In the United States especially, individuals at every stage in their academic careers are fortunate to be able to seek financial support for their research from a vast array of organizations dedicated to furthering scholarly inquiry. Some of these organizations, like the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art, are publically owned and supported. Others, like The Newberry Library in Chicago or the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, are private non-profit organizations founded by extremely wealthy philanthropists and held in trust for the benefit of the people of the United States and the world. Regardless of whether they are public or private all such institutions have some vested interest in supporting scholarly use of their archives, collections or facilities. As such it is usually makes sense when applying for funding from these organizations to do some research on the institution’s mission and resources so that you can clearly explain in your statement how you would make use of those resources if granted an award. This information is especially important to agencies and organizations that receive public funds since they are often called upon by legislators and others to justify the relevance and importance of the collections and facilities they maintain.
The American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA)
The American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, PA)
The Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
The Joan Heller-Diane Bernard Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies (New York, NY)
The CLAGS Fellowship at CUNY (New York, NY)
The William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (Ann Arbor, MI)
The Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE)
The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College (Northampton, MA)
The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (Hyde Park, NY)
Institutionally Sponsored Pre-Doctoral Fellowships and Long-Term Research Grants
Like institutionally sponsored travel and short-term research grants, institutionally sponsored pre-doctoral fellowships and long-term research grants are funded by organizations that have a particular interest in facilitating access to their collections or facilities. As such many require onsite residency during the duration of the fellowship period. Long-term research grants tend to range in duration from one month to six months or more. Pre-doctoral fellowships are typically one academic year in length, though some are renewable under certain circumstances. The list below represents only a handful of the institutionally sponsored pre-doctoral and long-term research grants that exist.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (New Haven, CT)
The John Carter Brown Library (Providence, RI)
The Cullman Center at the New York Public Library (New York, NY)
The Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC)
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas (Austin, TX)
The Library Company (Philadelphia, PA)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY)
National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (Washington, DC)
National Holocaust Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (Washington, DC)
The Newberry Library (Chicago, IL)
The Huntington Library (San Marino, CA)
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (Washington, DC)
The Kluge Center at the Library of Congress (Washington, DC)
The Getty Museum and Foundation (Los Angeles, CA)
The Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History (New York, NY)
The Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC)
The Winterthur Museum and Country Estate (Winterthur, DE)
The Women’s Research and Education Institute (Washington, DC)
ACLS Administered Fellowships and Grants
SSRC Administered Fellowships and Grants
External Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowships
The American Association of University Women (Washington, DC)
The Spencer Foundation (Chicago, IL)
The Woodrow Wilson Foundation (Princeton, NJ)
Federally Funded Fellowships and Grants
The Fulbright Program for US Students
The National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Institutes of Health
The National Science Foundation
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Post-Doctoral Research Fellowships
Traditionally, post-doctoral fellowships provided newly minted PhDs with one or more years of financial and institutional support to pursue highly specialized academic training or research without the teaching and administrative responsibilities that come with a faculty appointment. Because they often originated as fixed-term line-item components of large federally-funded research grants these fellowships were especially common in the natural, physical and medical sciences. In recent years, however, some post-doctoral opportunities for scholars in the humanities and social sciences have emerged. Although they are often less lucrative than tenure-track faculty appointments post-doctoral fellowships do have much to recommend them. First, they provide fellows with valuable opportunities to work with new peers and colleagues at a different institution. Second, they often entail direct involvement in major research initiatives that are intended to assemble the most promising scholars working on a particular theme or problem. Finally, for newly minted PhDs who have not yet accepted a permanent position, they help to mitigate the pressures of the tenure process by effectively extending the tenure clock by one or more years.
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowships
Unlike traditional post-doctoral fellowships which typically carry no teaching obligations because they are intended exclusively to facilitate subsequent research and/or highly specialized academic training, “teaching postdocs” demand some instructional labor from fellows in exchange for a modest salary and access to basic institutional resources like libraries, office space and, most importantly, time to do research and write. Fellowships of this sort have become extremely popular in recent years because they represent a mutually beneficial arrangement for both under-staffed colleges and university and under-employed PhDs, particularly PhDs in the humanities and social sciences. There are some teaching postdocs out there that carry a 2-2 teaching load—or even a 3-3 teaching load—and these hardly deserve the name since they are essentially full-time teaching appointments that differ very little from adjunct or visiting professorships. There are others, however, that truly are good deals for everyone involved. This is often especially true of institutionally-based postdoctoral fellowship societies which tend to offer multi-year appointments and which also tend to house fellows in interdisciplinary research institutes. Typically, post-doctoral teaching fellowships of this sort require that fellows teach only one or two courses per year leaving them free in the remainder of their time to do research and writing and to participate in the intellectual life of the institute with which they are affiliated. Here are some examples of particularly lucrative and prestigious post-doctoral teaching fellowship programs that operate on these basic principles:
The Harvard University Society of Fellows (Cambridge, MA)
The University of Michigan Society of Fellows (Ann Arbor, MI)
The Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities (New York, NY)
The University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (Berkeley, CA)
The University of Chicago Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts (Chicago, IL)
The Stanford University Humanities Fellows Program (Palo Alto, CA)
The Princeton University Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts (Princeton, NJ)
In addition to these programs which are relatively old and well established, many colleges and universities compete to serve as host institutions for foundation-sponsored post-doctoral fellowships. Most well known of these are the institutionally-based Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These post-doctoral fellowship programs are sometimes difficult to find out about because they are dispersed quite widely and different institutions advertise them in very different venues. Still a simple web search for “Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship” will yield many results in any given year.
Other Opportunities
In addition to fellowships and grants that are intended to support independent scholarly research at the pre-doctoral level there are many other opportunities for graduate students to gain valuable research experience and specialized academic training. These opportunities include inter-university exchange programs, workshops and symposia, specialized language training programs, topical or thematic summer schools and pre-professional internships to name just a few examples. While almost none of these programs are profit-making enterprises most do charge some kind of tuition or fee. Moreover, since most of these programs strive to keep costs as low as possible for all participants only a handful offer competitive scholarships or grants to help defray the cost of attending. This should not necessarily dissuade you from applying. Remember that it is much easier to make a compelling argument for a one-time grant or other supplementary assistance if you can demonstrate an obvious and urgent need for it. In the case of something like the School of Criticism and Theory, then, you are far more likely to be able to raise a thousand dollars from one source and five hundred dollars from another if you have an acceptance letter in hand.
Committee on Institutional Cooperation Programs - FLEP, Travelling Scholars Program
School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
The Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture and Society at Universiteit van Amsterdam (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
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Gender Studies
Indiana University
Memorial Hall E., 130
Bloomington, IN * 47403
(812) 855-0101
(812) 855-4869 (fax)
gender@indiana.edu
Important Links
Page Links
Why should I apply?
When Should I apply?
Am I a Viable Cadidate?
Typical Components of App./Grant
Application Form
CV
Personal Statement
Letters of Recommendation
Dossier Service
Cover Letter
Budget Proposal
Transcript
Bibliography
Writing Sample
General Advice
Where do I Look?
What is Available?
Internally Funded
Externally Funded
Travel Grants
Pre-doctoral Grants
Post-doctoral Fellowships
Post-doctoral Teaching
Other Opportunities
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