Eligibility and How to Apply
Eligibility
All Dartmouth undergraduate students are eligible to apply for these grants. Since they are intended to support research during leave terms or Winterim, they cannot be used while enrolled in Dartmouth courses (including LSA and FSP). Recipients who change their D-plans to be in residence during a grant term must forfeit the grant, but may re-apply for funding during a later period. International students should consult OVIS to ensure that their visas permit them to receive funding for independent research while they are away from campus.
Applying
The application deadlines are as follows:
Winter term (& "winterim"): November 1
Spring term: February 1
Summer term: May 1
Fall term: August 1
Interested students should contact a member of the Philosophy Department who is willing to serve as an advisor and formulate a research plan with their help. Since applications are due roughly at the fifth week of a term, contacting potential advisors in the first couple of weeks of the term is recommended. Applications for Winterim grants are due at the same time as Winter term grant applications. No late or incomplete applications will be accepted.
Complete applications include:
- An application statement (1000 words max) describing the intended research project, your reasons for pursuing it, a tentative schedule of work, and confirmation of your leave term status. It is not required that students produce term papers on their selected topics. The end result could be an annotated bibliography, an instructional video, a short paper, a website, an op-ed, or a critical summary of the research undertaken.
- A bibliography containing at least ten sources, articles or books, that are relevant to the project.
- An unofficial transcript.
- The name of the faculty advisor consulted in creating the proposal.
Each of these parts should be combined into a single pdf, and submitted using the form at: https://forms.gle/RUVA35UQuPa3C13Z7.
Applications will be reviewed by members of the philosophy department. Members of the review committee are ineligible to be faculty advisors. Proposals will be evaluated in terms of their feasibility, topicality, and relation to philosophy, broadly construed.
Students are required to meet with their advisors at the beginning and toward the end of their projects. The faculty member's role is mainly to offer advice for how to proceed with the research. At the beginning of the term after the end of the project, students should submit their final work, whatever it happens to be, to their faculty advisor. We hope to host events highlighting the independent research our students have done. At the end of each academic year, the Department will post a list of grant recipients and brief descriptions of their projects on our website.