Dear colleagues,

First I’d like to introduce myself to those who don’t already know me. I’m Professor of Literature and am in my twenty-third year at UCSD. Dean Richard Attiyeh has asked me to join OGSR as an Associate Dean of Graduate Studies. One of my new responsibilities is to work with departments on graduate fellowships.

I’m writing to encourage departments, graduate advisors, and especially faculty sponsors to work closely with applicants for graduate fellowships. Last year, as Director of the Making of the Modern World program in Eleanor Roosevelt College, I learned just how crucial faculty involvement is to a candidate’s chances for winning a highly competitive fellowship. Eleanor Roosevelt College was given the chance to cosponsor, with a campus department, a candidate for a faculty fellowship. Our candidate had dazzling qualifications, but, knowing the odds, my staff and I put considerable effort into assisting her on every step of the process, from her application essay (which went through numerous drafts before we approved it), to her faculty recommendations, to our own cover letter. She deservedly won the fellowship, and I like to think that our assistance, as time-consuming as it was for both the candidate and us, helped put her application over the top.

There are three ways in which departments and individual faculty members can help graduate fellowship applicants:

1) OUTREACH. It’s important to identify graduate students who are qualified for a particular fellowship and to encourage those students to apply. Since deadlines for fellowships typically fall between October and January, these early weeks in the quarter are critical in the outreach process.

2) PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT. Many qualified applicants have little or no experience in applying for fellowships. They need advice on how to present themselves effectively in an application. Faculty members should offer assistance in the process, particularly on an applicant’s statement of intent. No matter how worthy a candidate might be, a poorly written statement can easily jettison that candidate’s chances of winning an award.

3) LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION. A detailed letter of recommendation that displays true knowledge of a candidate’s work, relevant qualifications, and future promise is essential to that candidate’s chances of success. Screening committees can easily recognize a “boilerplate” recommendation and are all too likely to interpret it as a sign of only tepid support for a candidate.

Information about graduate fellowship opportunities is available at the OGSR website (ogsr.ucsd.edu/fellowships.html) and the Community of Science website (http://www.cos.com). If you have questions, or if the staff at OGSR and I can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

                                                Steve Cassedy
                                                Associate Dean of Graduate Studies