Student Summer Fellowships

These fellowships support student work on scholarly or creative projects in the humanities for ten consecutive weeks during the summer under the direction of a full-time Loyola faculty member. Students receive stipends of $5,000 each and are eligible for campus housing, if they wish; faculty mentors receive stipends of $1,000. The Center funds no more than a combined total of ten Student Summer Study Grants and Student Summer Fellowships per year.

For inquiries and support, please contact the Student Grants coordinator, Dr. Brett Butler, bhbutler@loyola.edu.

Eligibility

• Any Loyola undergraduate student, either full-time or part-time, excluding graduating seniors, is eligible to apply; ordinarily, full-time students will be given preference over part-time students. The student applicant need not necessarily be majoring in a humanities discipline, but the subject of his or her proposed project must be a topic in the humanities. Students majoring or minoring in the humanities will be given preference over those who are not majors or minors. A student may only apply for one fellowship per year.
• The fellowships are intended to support advanced work on a particular topic of interest related to the humanities either in subject matter or in methodology. Introductory or survey projects or those which duplicate existing courses are not eligible. The student may not receive academic credit for the project.
• The faculty mentor must be a member of a humanities department:
  • Classics
  • Communication and Media
  • English
  • History
  • Modern Languages and Literatures
  • Philosophy
  • Theology
  • Visual and Performing Arts
  • Writing

Standards for Proposals

Student proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

• The quality of the proposal, including its general conception, its organization, and the clarity of its description of the project;
• The significance of the proposed work within its discipline in the humanities;
• The student's ability, qualifications and the likelihood that he or she will complete the project successfully;
• The faculty mentor's competence in the discipline and specific area of the project; and
• The testimony of the faculty mentor's letter of recommendation.

Procedures

The student proposal should include the following:

• The application cover page;
• A typed, double-spaced proposal of 1,000 words or less (about four pages) which includes the title of the project and describes its objectives and methodology, its significance to the relevant humanities discipline and to the student's education;
• A bibliography (of texts and secondary sources already consulted and of those the student plans to consult) may also be included, especially for scholarly projects, in addition to the 1,000 word proposal;
• The faculty mentor's letter of recommendation (750 words maximum) should assess the quality of his or her student's proposal, the student's preparedness to undertake the project, and should describe the faculty member's own expertise in the area of the student's proposal; and
• If the student is to assist in the faculty mentor's research, both the student proposal and the faculty mentor's letter of recommendation must clearly make the case that this project will be of as much educational benefit to the student as a project which did not contribute to the faculty mentor's research.

A final report is due to the director of the Center by Sept. 30, consisting of three parts:

• A copy of the student's written work;
• A one-page letter from the student evaluating the experience; and
• A one-page letter from the faculty mentor evaluating the experience.

Students are also expected to make a brief oral presentation and create a poster summarizing their summer's work at Celebrate the Humanities! or a similar Center for the Humanities event occurring in early Fall. Students are required to attend a Zoom workshop with their faculty mentors in late summer to rehearse and refine their presentations and posters.

Faculty mentors are expected to:

• Be available to advise and support their student fellows throughout the summer months
• Participate in a presentation and poster workshop involving their fellows at the end of the summer
• Be available to provide additional feedback to their fellows about their presentations and posters
• Review provide feedback on their fellows' scholarly or creative projects in time for them to revise and submit their final versions to the Center
• Write a one-page letter evaluating their fellows' work in time for them to submit their final reports to the Center by September 30
• Attend Celebrate the Humanities! or similar Center event in early fall, at which their fellows will be presenting their summer work

Deadline

The student's application and the faculty mentor's letter of recommendation (sent separately) must be submitted electronically to the Program Assistant esgarrett@loyola.edu by the last working day of February for projects for the following summer.