Tthe online application for the 2012 Newcombe Dissertation Fellowships is now closed.
We are extending the deadline for supporting documents only
until 5 p.m. ET Tuesday,
November 22, 2011.
The Charlotte W. Newcombe
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
APPLICATION INFORMATION
Basics | Components | Deadline | Tips
Applications must be filed using the online form provided at the link near the bottom of this page. A completed application comprises the online application form, three letters of recommendation, and a current doctoral transcript, as well as a master's transcript where relevant.
In order to file an application, you must register as a user of the Woodrow Wilson website. There is no filing or registration fee.
When you register, you will provide basic contact information and choose a username and password. Once you submit your registration information, your online application will open. Completing this user profile will enable you to save your unfinished application, so that you can return later to add or change entries and view a checklist of supporting documents received. We recommend bookmarking the link so that you can easily return to your profile.
If you wish to sign off during the application process, be sure to hit the "Save" button at the bottom; this will save the information you have entered up to this point. When you have finished entering information and are certain that you will not wish to edit your application further, click the "Submit Application" button. Once you click on this button you will be unable to make any changes to your application.
Components of the Application
Included in the online application are these five required narrative components: an abstract, a statement of relevance to eithical or religious values, a full proposal, a selected bibliography, and a timetable for completion. Please see the tips at the bottom of this page for crucial information about formatting these narrative components.
- Abstract
The dissertation abstract, which should be no more than 200 words in length, summarizes your topic and its significance for the understanding of an important ethical or religious question.
- Statement of Relevance to ethical or relifious values
This statement should describe clearly and concisely the centrality of ethical and religious values to your project.
- Proposal
The proposal should describe the proposed work, detailing its relevance to ethical or religious values, describe source materials and their availability, comment on any special preparation or skills you have for carrying out the work, and give a clear statement of the research methodology employed.
The proposal must be no longer than 2000 words (which is equivalent to roughly six pages in 12-point, double-spaced type). - Selected Bibliography
The bibliography should indicate the major theoretical and critical works that bear on your dissertation, and should be no longer than two pages in standard bibliographic format (i.e., with entries single-spaced and with two spaces between entries). Note that this is a selected bibliography, not a comprehensive bibliography nor a list of works cited; it is important to include the works that most clearly demonstrate your preparation to carry out the work you propose.
- Timetable
The timetable should detail your chapter outline, your progress to date, and your schedule for the coming year. There is no definitive format for the timetable. It is up to you to determine how best to present your writing schedule. You may use paragraph/narrative form, or bullet points, or a combination of the two. You may summarize, annotate, or describe. This flexibility allows that the project can be expressed in a format that best suits the applicant, to demonstrate to the selection committee that you are truly in your FINAL year of dissertation writing. It should be no longer than 350 words (equivalent to approximately one double-spaced page).
To be submitted separately are your supporting materials—letters of recommendation and transcript.
- Three Letters of Recommendation
You must submit three letters of recommendation, one from your dissertation director and two from other faculty members familiar with your work.
You will be asked for the name, email and phone number for the person who will direct your dissertation and two additional faculty recommenders. (A co-director may be listed as a faculty recommender.)
NOTE: All recommendations MUST be submitted through our automatic online system.
HOW IT WORKS: When you enter a recommender's email address, an automatic request will be sent immediately to your recommender with a web link and a key code. Your recommender must click on the link and enter the key code in the login field. This gives them access to an electronic form that they fill out and submit directly. WE ADVISE that you alert your recommenders to this PRIOR to filling in their email address, so that they can be prepared for this email. The email will be from "Website Email Sender" and the subject heading will be "Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation: Recommender Invitation". Please be sure to include your recommender's correct phone numbers for verification purposes.
Recommendations will only be accepted if they are submitted through this confidential secure system. - Transcript*
You are required to submit an official transcript from the Ph.D.-granting institution as well as the institution where you received a master's degree (where applicable). We advise that you request these immediately.
Transcripts must be mailed in the sealed envelope that your university provides, and may be directed to:
The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
P.O. Box 5281, CWN Department
Princeton, NJ 08543
Please note that UPS and FedEx do not deliver to P.O. boxes. If you choose to send your transcripts through UPS or FedEx, please use the Foundation's street address.
Do not send undergraduate transcripts.
*Note that transcripts are the only documents that may be mailed to our office. All other materials must be submitted online.
Deadline
The deadline for all applications and application materials in the 2012 competition is November 15, 2011.
By the end of March 2012, all applicants will be advised whether or not their candidacy has advanced to the final selection round. Results of the competition are announced before the end of April.
Tips
Current contact information:
Please be sure to provide a phone number and email address where program staff can contact you regarding your status or if for any reason your application is incomplete or if there are questions about your eligibility.
Writing a compelling proposal:
Eligible proposals have ethical or religious values as a central concern. Selection committees will look for proposals that illuminate religious or ethical questions of broad significance and elucidate the ways in which these values do or should inform choices and give meaning to people's lives. Dissertations may consider any period of time, but should be concerned with continuing problems and questions of human life. Connections should be made between specific topics and wider religious or ethical questions. Critical editions, biographies, studies that are primarily statistical, collaborations, and annotated texts are not acceptable. A look at the dissertation topics of recent Fellows may serve to clarify the nature of the Newcombe program.
Formatting your documents:
The plain-text software used in this application does not support some of the formatting options and automatic features commonly used in word processing programs.
- Character formats and special characters: The software that processes your online application produces only plain text output—no italics, underlining, boldfacing, or special characters/diacritical marks will appear in the copy of your materials that the committees receive.
- To indicate italics or underlining (e.g., for a book title), place a single underscore before
and after the text you are indicating.
Example:
not As You Like It or As You Like It
but _As You Like It_
- To boldface or create a subheading, use upper-case letters.
Example:
not Section II: Methodology or Section II: Methodology
but SECTION II: METHODOLOGY
- Do not use diacritical marks and special characters; transliterate if necessary.
Example:
not façade but facade
not ācārya but acarya or acharya
Any diacritical marks or special characters will be reproduced in your materials as question marks:
fa?ade, ?c?rya
- To indicate italics or underlining (e.g., for a book title), place a single underscore before
and after the text you are indicating.
- Line spacing and paragraph spacing: Prepare the narrative components of your application (abstract, proposal, bibliography, and timetable) in a word processing program, then paste your text into the areas provided on the online application. When you paste in text, your paragraph formatting and line spacing will disappear (for instance, double-spaced text will look single-spaced). Do NOT attempt to recreate paragraph formatting or line spacing within the memo field of the application after you paste in your text.
- To put appropriate space between paragraphs in your original document, hit "Return" twice at the end of each paragraph—do not use soft returns (shift+enter) and do not use "space before/space after" to create space between paragraphs. These formatting codes are not picked up by the plain-text software that processes applications.
- To indent a paragraph, hit the space bar several times—do not use tabs or special paragraph formats (e.g., hanging indents). Again, these will not be picked up by the plain-text application software.
- To put appropriate space between paragraphs in your original document, hit "Return" twice at the end of each paragraph—do not use soft returns (shift+enter) and do not use "space before/space after" to create space between paragraphs. These formatting codes are not picked up by the plain-text software that processes applications.
- Footnotes: Automated footnotes, such as those created by using the "Insert/Reference/Footnote" command in Microsoft Word, are not recognized by the plain-text software used in this application, and will be lost. to insert a footnote, simply type the note number in square brackets at the end of a sentence, like this:
...as Butler and others have suggested.[1]
Then, at the end of your proposal, simply enter several hard returns and place your notes there as numbered endnotes. While endnotes are not counted against the length of your proposal, they should not be used for lengthy narrative additions that do not fit within the allocated word count. - Pasting in text from a website or email: HTML coding of the kind used on webpages and in some emails may not be recognized by the application software. Therefore, if you wish to copy and paste text from a website or email into a memo field on the application, it is strongly recommended that you first “wash” that text by copying it into Notepad or another plain-text program, removing any code, and then copying the cleaned-up text into the memo field.
- Spellcheck and proofread: Even if you have spellchecked your document before pasting text into the application, a final proofreading once your text has been pasted in—ensuring that the full text has been transferred as you intended—is strongly recommended.
The 2012 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship application is now closed. The deadline was November 15, 2011.
The deadline for supporting documents only has been extended
until 5 p.m. ET, Tuesday, November 22, 2011.
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