Overview
The Graduate School, in collaboration with the Office of National Scholarships and Fellowships (ONS&F), is pleased to announce an incentive plan to encourage faculty to take a more active role in advising students who apply for prestigious, nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships. Faculty are eligible for up to $5,000 in rewards for mentoring students through the process of developing proposals and submitting applications for eligible awards. For full program details, including application procedures, eligibility requirements, and access to the online application, visit http://www.onsf.uconn.edu/nfip.
Rationale and Goal
Many UConn students are promising candidates for individual fellowships, but many who are eligible do not apply. Faculty advising, mentoring, and support are vital to the development of quality proposals and successful applications. Therefore, The Graduate School has established an incentive plan designed to broaden and deepen faculty involvement in this particular form of mentoring and to encourage submission of high quality applications from students enrolled in disciplines in which individual fellowships are available.
Plan Description
The Graduate School will provide a monetary incentive for faculty advisers who mentor their research advisees through the process of applying for individual fellowships funded by extramural agencies or foundations. Faculty members whose research advisees apply for an eligible individual fellowship (e.g. NSF GRFP, NIH NRSA, Ford Foundation Dissertation Completion, etc.) will be awarded $1,000 from The Graduate School, which will be deposited into an unrestricted research account (Ledger 4).
To qualify for this award, the application must be reviewed prior to submission by the student’s program director or faculty mentor, who must verify to The Graduate School that the student’s application meets his or her standard of quality and/or competiveness. After the application has been submitted, the faculty adviser will provide an electronic copy of the complete application along with evidence that the application has been received by the granting agency or foundation. The $1,000 award is given for initial submissions only. While students are encouraged to apply for more than one fellowship, faculty are only eligible for one award per student per year, with a maximum of two awards for mentoring any single student over the course of that student’s career.
If a student’s application is funded, the faculty adviser will receive an additional financial reward of $4,000, deposited in his or her unrestricted research account (Ledger 4). For faculty to receive the $4,000 award, their advisees must provide permission for ONS&F to share their successful application with future internal applicants served by the office. Non-UConn students will not be allowed to review these successful applications. Applicants with concerns about proprietary elements of their proposal should contact ONS&F staff (onsf@uconn.edu) to discuss their concerns.
Eligibility
This plan is available to faculty advisers of students in any degree program discipline in which extramural individual fellowship funding is available. To be eligible for this incentive, the award must provide a stipend equal to or more than 75% of a nine-month UConn graduate assistantship at the level appropriate for the student’s status at the time the award begins (current amounts listed here). Applications for non-research fellowships, fellowships providing less than this minimum stipend, or for travel and other small grants, will not be eligible for an incentive award under this program.
Additional Information Specific to the 2016-17 Pilot Program
This program takes effect October 15, 2016. The Graduate School anticipates funding all eligible requests, but reserves the right to discontinue or suspend the program subject to the availability of funds.
Fellowship applications with deadlines (internal for those requiring institutional nomination or endorsement; external otherwise) that fall before October 15, 2016 are not eligible for 2016-17 round of funding.
The Graduate School and Office of National Scholarships and Fellowships encourage all faculty to increase their efforts to advise and mentor graduate and advanced undergraduate students through the process of developing proposals and submitting applications for prestigious, nationally and internationally competitive scholarship and fellowships and to participate in this new incentive program. Those with questions about the program or their eligibility may access complete program eligibility requirements at http://www.onsf.uconn.edu/nfip.
For more information, contact: ONSF at onsf@uconn.edu