Kellogg Fellowship | Middlebury

Description

The Kellogg Fellowship provides highly motivated students engaging in areas of humanistic study with research support for senior work related to their major program of study. The fellowship may be used for travel and research expenses incurred during the summer and academic semesters.

Application Deadline

Application materials must be submitted by March 1, 2025. Faculty support statements are due by March 7. Students will be notified by mid-April.

Applications should be completed to the best of your ability with the understanding that projects or timelines may need to be adjusted due to changes in COVID-19 policies.

Eligibility

Middlebury juniors and junior and senior Febs who meet their departmental requirements for independent senior work and will pursue that work during the following summer and/or academic year (one or more semesters) are eligible to apply.

Proposed projects must “engage in philosophical inquiry in the humanities and areas of humanistic study, broadly defined, including but not limited to philosophy, religion, classics, history, history of art and architecture, film and media culture studies, languages, American studies, and English and American literature.”

How to Apply

Complete the online application by the deadline. You should be discussing your application with your faculty advisor(s) prior to submitting the application.

Key Online Application Components

A project proposal, which includes research questions and how the project engages in humanistic inquiry (1500 words or less)
An explanation of your preparation for the proposed project (e.g. courses, past research, specific skills) (750 words or less)
An explanation of how the work will provide an important capstone experience for your undergraduate career (750 words or less)
Preliminary research plan, including a list of activities and materials involved in the research and anticipated costs (file upload)
Advising transcript and current resume (file upload)
Names of two faculty who are providing statements of support: (1) your project advisor and (2) a Middlebury faculty member who has taught you or supervised you in a research capacity
Name of the department chair who is confirming the project meets the requirements for senior work in your major

Optional budget template to use for the application upload.

Faculty and Chair Statements

Faculty requests for statements of support will be sent through the online application. For the department chair, they will need to certify that this project fulfills the major requirements for senior work. Faculty will receive an email request and can submit through the online portal.

Applicants should have notified faculty well in advance and discussed their application with them, so that they are able to provide their statements or confirmation by the deadline which is soon after the application deadline.

The two support statements are needed. The statement from the faculty advisor for the project (less than 500 words) should explain how the student’s academic work has prepared them for this project and the merits of both the student and project as a capstone experience. The second support statement should be from a faculty member who has taught the student or supervised them in a research context and discuss applicant’s academic strengths and preparedness for independent senior work. The chair confirmation need only be a sentence or two.

Selection of Kellogg Fellows

A selection committee composed of the dean for faculty research and development, the associate dean for fellowships and research, and faculty members drawn from different disciplines will review applications and select fellows.

Award

Kellogg fellows will receive $5,000 to support research expenses (e.g. travel, conference or workshop participation, and equipment required for the project) incurred during the summer and/or academic semesters. Research support will begin during the summer and extend through one or two semesters, depending on the fellow’s senior work plan. The funds will be dispersed at the beginning of the summer. We expect project expenses will vary but the total award amount will be $5000.

Faculty Advisors to Kellogg fellows will receive $1,000 in support of their own research.

Fellow Requirements

Fellows must enroll in the appropriate senior work courses for their major during their senior year (500 or 700 level courses). Work produced with the support of the Kellogg fellowship will be submitted for the fellows’ senior work. Fellows must give at least one presentation about their work at a campus event (e.g. department presentations, spring student symposium) and are encouraged to also present their work at relevant professional and undergraduate conferences. Fellows enrolled in the spring semester are expected to present at the Spring Student Symposium.

Notes: Kellogg fellows should expect to use their fellowship monies to support conference travel and senior work-related expenses incurred during their senior year, rather than the SRPS and Academic Travel Fund. Fellows remain eligible to apply for relevant departmental funds for additional funding, if available in their department. A portion of the award may be taxable income depending on the amount of documented research expenses.

2024-25 Kellogg Fellows

Communications story about this year’s fellows.

Sade Awodesu ’25, who is majoring in history and Arabic, will research two youth protest movements—the March 23 Uprising in Morocco of 1965 that advocated for the right to higher education and the February First Movement at Princeton University in 1974 which fought for racial and educational equality. “I believe mapping these two histories onto one another will reveal a more complete picture of the New Left and their methods in a global context,” wrote Awodesu, who plans to make three research trips over the summer and coming year. For her project titled “Harakat 23 Mars and the February First Movement: A bi-national case study of Memory and the New Left, 1970-1977,” Awodesu is working with advisor Dima Ayoub, associate professor of Arabic.

Natasha Deen ’25, an English major with a minor in history, is working on a research project titled, “Finding Ourselves: Women’s Voices in 20th Century Irish Short Fiction” which seeks to examine the representation of female characters in the short stories of Edna O’Brien and Mary Lavin. For her field work, Deen will primarily spend time in Counties Dublin, Clare, and Meath in Ireland. “I was immediately drawn into stories written by Edna O’Brien and Mary Lavin, two women who uniquely participate in and explore Irish women’s lives in rural and urban settings,” wrote Deen. “Their stories are deeply involved in the development of their characters, specifically in exploring women’s struggles in and out of the rural countryside during the first decades of the Irish Free State.” Deen will be working with advisor Benjamin Graves, assistant professor of English.

Yang Liu ’25, a history and philosophy major, is working on a project titled, “The Evolving Social Status of Keqing (客卿) in the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420 - 589 A.D.).” Liu plans to conduct a historical investigation and a genealogical analysis of the social status of Keqing in Imperial Chinese history, specifically focusing on the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, which spanned approximately from 420 to 589 C.E. “If one were to understand China both in terms of its history and its present, he/she must understand how the class of scholar-officials came into existence during the Han Dynasty, and one of the prototypes or historical predecessors of the scholar-officials is the group of Keqing,” wrote Liu. He will be working with advisor Don Wyatt, professor of history.

Kaela Loftus ’24.5, an English major, is working on a project titled, “There’s Silence Here: Angolan Storytelling and Decentering Western Perspectives” which focuses on what has been lost through colonization, and on researching Angolan history from non-Western perspectives. “As an Angolan-American writer and scholar, I am heavily invested in writing about Angola, particularly through the stories and lived experiences of my mother who lived through the Angolan civil war and the legacy of Portuguese imperialism, which has led to the massive loss of Angolan art, history, and lives,” writes Loftus, who is working with advisor Spring Ulmer, visiting assistant professor of English.

Ryan McElroy ’25, a history major with a minor in history of art and architecture, is working on a project titled, “The Ottoman “Other”: Tracing Trans-Imperial Exchanges in Venice and Northern Italy, 1500-1700” which investigates migration of transimperial subjects between two hostile yet symbiotic societies, the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire. “My research aims to bring stories from the margins — the folklore behind remote Italian-Turkish towns, the records of Ottoman-Venetian exchanges, visual representations of “Turks” in Renaissance Italy — into the forefront of historical inquiry,” wrote McElroy, who will be working with advisor Febe Armanios, professor of history.