Provost Fellows

Program Announcement - 2008

On behalf of Provost Jamshed Bharucha, and the University Council on Graduate Education (UCGE), I am happy to announce the fifth year of the Provost's Fellows program.

Background: The Provost's Fellows program is intended to recognize and recruit the very best incoming doctoral students by providing a supplemental stipend of $5,000 per year for the first two years of the student's program of study. The goal of the award is to augment the student's aid package so that financial considerations do not stand in their way of choosing to pursue their degrees at Tufts. There are currently twenty-one fellows in the program this academic year.

Process and Selection Criteria: This year we are changing the process of selecting Provost's Fellows for the Ph.D. class entering September 2008. These changes were motivated in large part by the feedback that we received from the program assessment conducted last year. The new procedures are designed to make the timing of fellowship offers more consistent with their purpose and more in line with the progress of graduate admissions in each school. We hope that this gives you more autonomy and flexibility to recruit your top tier candidates. The selection criteria remain nearly identical to those of past years. In particular, they are:

• outstanding academic records as indicated by grades, standardized test scores, programs of study, related experiences, and reputation of the school(s) attended,
  
• excellent letters of recommendation,
  
• degree to which the student's proposed program of study matches the strategic directions of the relevant Tufts graduate program, and
  
• ancillary measures of excellence specific to a school or cross-school program.

In past years, schools were required to submit information on fellow nominees for review by the University Council on Graduate Education (UCGE) who would verify that these criteria were met prior to the school being allowed to make a formal offer of a Provost's Fellow appointment. Our experience has shown that the schools are nominating applicants who almost all meet the criteria set by the Council and hence, the in-line UCGE review step added undue complexity with little value to the process. Therefore, for this year's admission cycle, each school will be given a suggested number of nominations that they may make at their discretion along with a maximum number of fellowships that any one school will receive.

The application and approval process will be as follows:

• Schools review their doctoral applicants and select the candidates who will be offered a Provost's Fellow appointment using the criteria listed above. While the total number of school nominations is flexible, the maximum number of new fellows per school is fixed (see below). The schools will have to manage their recruiting to reflect their limits.
  
  
• Schools provide the Provost's Office with the support material for candidates to whom they are offering a Provost's Fellow appointment, not just those who ultimately accept the fellowship. This information should be submitted by the graduate deans in electronic form (no hard copy, please review all scanned material for legibility and reading orientation) to jessica.shepard@tufts.edu with a cc to me (vincent.manno@tufts.edu) in the following form:
  • a. A cover letter that summarizes the case(s) for the selectee(s) based on the selection criteria, and
  • b. Each selectee's application form, transcript(s), personal statement, letters of recommendation, test scores, and other relevant material.
  Contact Jessica Shepard (7-3931) with questions about transmitting this information.
  
  
• The schools report acceptances or withdrawals to Jessica and to me as they occur.

Please see the table below for school-specific information. The suggested number of nominations is based on past school yields and the maximum number of fellows to be supported is determined by the school's doctoral population and production. The maximum number of nominations should not be viewed as a quota. In fact, we expect that the number of fellows from most schools would be less than this limit based on past recruiting experiences for this highly competitive applicant pool. The table also includes the current membership of the UCGE. I would ask that you consult with the UCGE member(s) from your school in making your nominations as they have first hand experience in the UCGE review and selection process.

School	UCGE Member	Suggested Number of Nominations*	Maximum Number of 2008 Fellows
Arts & Sciences	A. Jalal, B. Trimmer	10	5
Engineering	S. Islam	8	3
Fletcher	P. Uvin	6	3
Friedman	P. Walker	6	3
Sackler /Medicine	L. Feig	15	5
Cummings	A. Donohue-Rolfe	3	1

In consultation with the deans and program coordinators, I typically contact the prospective fellows, on behalf of the Provost's Office, to reinforce our desire to have them join the Tufts doctoral community.

Feedback:Our goal is for this initiative to be beneficial to all doctoral programs. Please contact Associate Provost Vin Manno to discuss ways to improve the program.

Vincent P. Manno
Associate Provost
vincent.manno@tufts.edu
(617) 627-2548