• Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship

    Jun 15, 2015 8:00 am

    Dear colleagues, 

    The Whiting Foundation has invited the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to nominate a recently-tenured faculty member in the humanities for the Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship. Faculty who received tenure between the fall of 2010 and fall of 2015 are eligible. In essence, this is a semester-long, project-based fellowship to recognize and support faculty who incorporate public engagement of various kinds into their scholarship. Proposals should not involve a scholarly monograph as the final output.

    The Foundation hand-selected about 40 institutions to pilot this fellowship opportunity, and it expects to make 10 awards. Please note that during this pilot phase, the Foundation will be seeking to support faculty who have already been translating their scholarly work for the benefit of the public sphere or are in the early stages of doing so.

    We are sending this to you in advance of the internal call for proposals so that you can plan accordingly to either submit an application yourself or share this opportunity with interested colleagues.  Please watch for the official call for proposals during the week of June 29, which will include instructions for the brief proposal required for the internal selection process and other details. The internal deadline for proposals will most likely be during the first week of August, and the Foundation’s deadline is October 15. In the meantime, please contact Janelle Weatherford, Director of the Office Foundation Relations, if you have any questions: jwthford@illinois.edu.

     

    About the Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship (information provided by the Whiting Foundation)   http://www.whiting.org/

    The Whiting Foundation invites selected colleges and universities to nominate a recently-tenured professor in the humanities for the Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship, a pilot program designed to celebrate and support faculty who incorporate public engagement into their scholarly vocations. 

    We believe that those who devote their professional lives to the study and teaching of the humanities are in a unique position to contribute to public understanding. This fellowship aims to identify professors with a demonstrated commitment to using their scholarly expertise to reach wider audiences. It funds six consecutive months of leave for work on an ambitious project with direct and significant impact outside the academy. 

    If successful over time, the program will amplify the voices of scholars who take up the challenge of engaging the public, build a community of faculty dedicated to this form of service, and ultimately help to restore broader faith in the value of advanced work in the humanities.

     

    Who is eligible? 

    Professors in the humanities who received tenure between fall of 2010 and fall of 2015 are eligible to be nominated. In this initial round, we seek scholars who have at least modest experience that demonstrates an orientation toward public engagement; in future rounds, we hope to be able to support faculty who are undertaking this kind of work for the first time.  

    The Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship can be taken consecutively with institutional or other grant-supported leave, if the nominating institution approves. 

     

    What kinds of public-facing work will be supported? 

    A nominee can propose to work on any ambitious project, new or existing, that will substantively engage the public beyond the academy. Opportunities to contribute to public life and understanding vary considerably based on a scholar’s expertise, interests, and talents, and they are not restricted to those who study the topics most obviously connected to contemporary political, cultural, or social debates. We hope to support Fellows whose scholarship covers a range of disciplines, periods, and perspectives. 

    We also hope to support Fellows who, taken as a group, use a variety of methods and forms to engage the public; more important than the medium chosen is the ability to connect with a broader audience in an intellectually rich and compelling way. Illustrative examples include, but are by no means limited to:   

    • Writing a deeply researched book for a general audience on a topic in contemporary philosophy 
    • Writing and placing one or more articles in a mainstream online or print magazine on the history of science 
    • Contributing to the research for and creation of a documentary film on Elizabethan theater 
    • Curating an exhibit at an off-campus museum or gallery on an aspect of race in American history 
    • Collaborating with a director as a dramaturg for a theater or play with a significant historical aspect and creating program notes incorporating scholarly research 
    • Developing curriculum modules for grades 6-12 on the history and culture of East Asia, along with a plan to disseminate them effectively 
    • Working with a local station to launch a live radio show and/or podcast bringing the English Romantic poets or the Harlem Renaissance to a wide listenership 
    • Co-creating a smartphone app to direct users to rich historical information about nearby sites 
    • Designing and implementing a series of professional development workshops for high school teachers of Latin to discuss recent scholarship on the ancient world and consider how they might incorporate it in their pedagogy 

    For the purpose of this fellowship, we distinguish between the interpretive humanities and the creative arts. For example, a professor proposing to choreograph a new dance piece would not be eligible, though one proposing a film on the history and meaning of the work of a choreographer would be. 

    The plan to complete a project should be thoroughly fleshed out, though work need not yet be underway. We recognize that the amount of time required to bring a project to completion will vary considerably. Nominees may certainly propose work that will not be finished within the fellowship period, though they should be in a position to make significant progress on it through six months of concentrated attention. 

     

    What does the fellowship consist of? 

    Fellows’ home institutions will be given a grant of $40,000 to fund six consecutive months of leave and an additional stipend of up to $10,000 to be made available to the fellow to cover costs such as travel, collaboration, and training. Fellows may choose to take the leave in the fall of 2016 or the spring of 2017. All fellows will participate in two convenings, one in the summer of 2016 and one in the summer of 2017, and provide a brief final report on their work at the end of the fellowship. 

    In cases where the $40,000 grant does not fully cover half of the nominee’s annual salary and benefits, the Foundation expects that the home institution will ensure the fellow continues to receive her or his full salary and benefits without interruption or diminution. 

     

    Projects will be selected based on the following three criteria: 

    • Intellectual significance: Does the project make use of the nominee’s scholarly expertise in an intellectually rigorous way? Will the project make a meaningful intellectual contribution for its audience, conveying the complexity and nuance of humanistic learning? Does the nominee have an outstanding history of research and teaching that lends itself to the proposed project? 
    • Anticipated public impact: How significantly will the project affect the public, in terms of both breadth (e.g., size of the audience) and depth (e.g., level of engagement)? (Note that projects need not be national in scope.) Does the nominee have a clear plan to reach the intended audience(s)? Has the nominee demonstrated an ability to reach broader audiences effectively? 
    • Feasibility: Does the nominee have the qualifications to complete the work proposed during the fellowship (or in the longer timeline laid out in the application)? Is the project itself manageable, taking into account any work the nominee has already done? If success of the project depends on collaborators or a third party (such as a magazine or book publisher), does the proposal include persuasive evidence that the collaboration will be effective? 

    If you have questions, please contact Janelle Weatherford.

     

    Janelle Weatherford
    Director, Foundation Relations
    Office of the Vice Chancellor for
    Institutional Advancement
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    507 East Green Street, Suite 426
    Champaign, IL 61820
    Tel: 217-244-6566
    Web: http://vcia.illinois.edu/FoundationRelations/index.html