Graduate Student Fellow
If you are not generally aware of the society and its activities, you
might want to look first at the introductory material about it.
The fellowship of Woodrow Wilson Scholars is a small society of
scholars that is designed to stimulate intellectual exchanges between
Princeton graduate students and faculty in the social sciences, broadly
defined. The graduate fellows work on theses that have policy
relevance, again, broadly defined.
The Fellowship's central task is to create occasions for meeting people
in other disciplines and conducting scholarly exchanges with them. It
does this in two ways. First, it holds a once a month lunch meeting at
which the graduate student members discuss their research projects with
one another, and a monthly dinner at which a faculty member talks about
his or her current project with the assembled faculty and graduate
students.
Generally, fellows are at the stage of their graduate careers in which
they are well launched into their thesis work, having solved the
problems of the general feasibility of the chosen topic and the
identification of research methods used to attack the problem. The
characteristic candidates, therefore, apply for one of the fellowships
when their advisor and thesis committee members have reviewed their
thesis proposal and the candidate has demonstrated some progress into
the thesis material. Applications are filed mid-spring of one year for
fellowships that begin in the fall of the following year. Candidates
are asked to submit several kinds of material in support of their
application, and a reference letter from their advisor, and perhaps
another faculty member who knows them well, is solicited. The
fellowship selectors also sometimes consult the graduate director of
the candidate's home department.
The fellowship provides support for the fellow at a level comparable to
a Princeton University teaching or research assistantship, and also
covers tuition expenses. A grant to support some research expenses is
also given, as well as an allowance supporting the meals connected with
the various meetings. In other words, the fellows are completely
supported for the years that they are society members. We therefore
expect that the fellows will not take on other commitments, and
certainly that they will not do so without first discussing them with
the program director. We also expect that the fellows will made a
considerable commitment to letting the Scholars' activities enrich
their own work, and also to contributing to the enrichment of the other
Scholars' thinking. This implies faithful attendance at Society
meetings and more, a willingness to make considered contributions to
the various discussions that take place during the meetings. Seeking
out other fellows to discuss your ideas on material from your
discipline that would be relevant to their theses and helping them find
the references to enable them to explore these possibilities would be
the sort of gesture that we would hope that fellows would make toward
each other. Scholarly collaborations have also emerged.
These expectations determine the criteria on which the fellows are
selected. Fellows will be engaged in a reasonably mature intellectual
exploration, be able to articulate its assumptions and discoveries to a
general audience, and be open to learning about new problems and novel
research methods. They will also be able to sense possible policy
implications of their findings and the findings of others. Finally,
they will be able to make the time and energy commitments that will
enable them to contribute to the intellectual life of the group.
To be concrete, there two obligations the fellows assume as well as the
ones listed above: attendance and participation in the two series of
meetings the society holds during the year. Given the time demands on
people at Princeton, both are scheduled during mealtimes. Once a month
there is a lunch at which one fellow presents his or her thesis work
and the group of fellows discusses it. Once a month dinner is also
held, at which one of the faculty fellows introduces a topic that he or
she has been engaged with recently and a discussion follows.
One note of caution. As you will understand, the selection criteria for
the fellowship program involve not only the credentials of the
candidate, but other considerations such as the ways in which the
candidate's thesis project and thesis research methods will contribute
to providing an intellectually rich mix of approaches that will
illuminate policy problems and solutions. It is also the case that the
Fellowship will seek fellows who are distributed across the various
departments that participate in the Fellowship program.
For more information about the specific schedule of the Fellowship of
Woodrow Wilson Scholars activities, including the application dates,
please consult the scheduling page. If you are considering applying,
you should begin with a candid discussion with your thesis advisor
about whether this makes sense. We expect that the nominations of new
fellows will come from thesis advisors. The advisor could be asked to
look at both this page of the website and the Reference Writer's page
to get an understanding of the particular character of the Fellowship
of Scholars. If the advisor is not familiar with the FWWS, he or she
could be directed to the about the fellowship of the Woodrow Wilson
Society page.