Franke Undergraduate Application
APPLICATION DEADLINE: Thurs., May 2, 2024 (11:59pm)
*With recommendation letter due the following day
Undergraduate Franke Fellowship for Innovative Humanities Scholarship for 2024-2025
The Kaplan Humanities Institute offers Franke Undergraduate Fellowships for students who have devised innovative and promising humanities projects for their senior year. For this highly selective capstone experience, Franke Undergraduate Fellows will have the opportunity to enhance their projects by playing a significant role in the interdisciplinary community of the Humanities Institute. They will discuss vital issues and ideas with faculty and graduate students at weekly lunch colloquia; meet renowned scholars and artists; and present their work at the annual Future Directions Forum.
- The Franke Undergraduate Fellowship is a year-long fellowship during senior year; students apply for the fellowship in spring of their junior year.
- Franke Undergraduate Fellows are expected to work with a faculty supervisor from their home department who will advise their year-long project. (Click here to see the range of current fellows’ work—undergrads are below the grads on the page).
- The Fellowship includes the Senior Humanities Seminar (HUM 398) in both fall and winter quarters (.5 credit per quarter). This seminar is focused on faculty mentoring in research design, critical analysis, and constructive critique as well as training in how to create a public talk for audiences outside the student's discipline.
- Franke Undergraduate Fellows receive $3,000 in funding (stipend).
- See FAQs at the bottom of this page for more!
Eligibility
To be eligible for a Franke Undergraduate Fellowship, a student must be:
- A senior in 2024-2025
- Pursuing an independent humanities research project in any Northwestern school or program
- On campus during the entire year of the fellowship
Application instructions
- Franke Undergraduate Fellowship applications are accepted via an online portal (see link below).
- Application materials include documents (listed below) and a letter of recommendation from your faculty advisor.
- Application documents should be prepared as PDFs, and they should be double-spaced. Please title the top of each page with your name and the section title (e.g., Research Statement, Personal Statement, etc.)
Application documents
- Research Statement (maximum of 2 pages)
- Personal Statement (maximum of 2 pages) answering the question, “Why do you wish to join the Kaplan Institute community?”
- Unofficial transcripts
- Writing sample (up to 10 pages) — Ideally, the writing sample should be related to your research topic, although we realize this may not be possible in every case
- Curriculum Vitae
- Letter of Recommendation from the faculty advisor who will supervise your year-long project (see details below).
Letter of recommendation
Your application must include a letter of recommendation from the faculty advisor who will supervise your year-long project. Recommendations are due one day after the application submission date. We suggest that you give your recommender advance notice so they are ready to submit their letter by this date.
In the application portal, you will enter your recommender's name and email address. After you submit your online application, this person will be automatically emailed instructions for uploading their letter. Please alert them that the automated email comes from "Jill Mannor at Smartsheet" so they know that it is for this competition!
Submitting your application
Please complete the form fields and submit your complete application materials to this link:
https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/908af1210ab94fd2902fdb3b94ab101d
FAQs
- The Franke is a self-standing fellowship within the Kaplan Institute, designed to provide interdisciplinary engagement and support for each student's own research project. Thus, your project can be part of an honors program, or it can be independent; you do not need to have separate research projects. The key is to make sure you have a dedicated faculty advisor to direct your project content from within your home discipline.
- Yes, your project can be an extension of work you've already done via the Undergrad Research Grant. It does, however, need to be ongoing research (that is, you must actively work on the project throughout the year [2024-2025] with a faculty advisor and cannot just submit a project you've already finished).
- The HUM 398 seminar is geared to looking at interdisciplinarity, research writing, and the humanities as a discipline—its connection to democracy, its role in liberal arts education, etc. A major focus of the winter session is learning skills of academic presentation as part of preparing the fellow's work for the Future Directions Forum. Thus, HUM 398 is designed to complement your home department training, not duplicate (or replace) it.
- Meeting times for HUM 398 (both fall and winter) are set based on the schedules of the Franke Fellows and instructor. Franke Fellows are also expected to attend Kaplan's weekly lunch colloquia from 12 - 1:30pm on Wednesdays.
Any other questions?
If you have any questions, or would like to see sample research statements, please contact Jill Mannor at jill.mannor@northwestern.edu