Wilson fellowship a Hopkins lure

This article is the first in a series on the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, its creation, its students and their research. Future articles will spotlight the frustrations and triumphs of various Wilson fellows as their projects have progressed over the years.

Picture yourself back during your first days at Hopkins: gawky freshman at move in day lugging your bedding and beanbag chairs, hugging your parents goodbye, feigning complete confidence before you even know your way around campus. The first things on your to-do list include meeting everyone in your dorm, finding the best delivery pizza, learning your way around Gilman Hall and eventually picking a major.

For the 95 current Woodrow Wilson fellows on campus, there's a little more weight on their shoulders -- and in their pockets. Their to-do list includes: begin four-year independent research project. Each fellow that enters his freshman year has $10,000. In four years, they will present their cumulative project.

The Wilson program -- open to freshmen and sophomore inductees -- has hosted students who've studied cancer, cathedrals and Erotic cakes, students who aspire to lab science and film production, students whose senior poster sessions were laser-printed models of perfection and those who stapled printer paper to a matte board.

Since its inception in fall 1999, these $10,000 budgets have prompted cultural explorations and journal articles, amateur research worries and competitive applications.

As the second full class of Wilson fellows prepares to graduate this May, it embodies the evolution of a program created as much to inspire research as to lure top students from peer institutions. Here is a look into its evolution and the frustrations and successes of its students.

Birth of the Wilson

Hopkins alum J. Barclay Knapp ("79) offered $10 million in 1999 to establish something "consistent with Hopkins' mission." Part of the money would create the undergraduate Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. In spirit of "knowledge for the world," the Wilson gives money for independent research.

"We were the first research university," says Program Director Steven David -- funding a research-based fellowship "made sense." All of a sudden, free money beckoned at incoming freshmen: free money, four years, any project they wanted -- provided they made the cut. And so the fellowship was born to provide mutual benefit: for students, the appeal of big name research; for Hopkins, a powerful recruiting tool for top students.

"We've pulled students away from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford -- schools we usually lose to," says David. "That's the main purpose of this program: to attract the best students to Hopkins."

The challenge was actually incorporating undergrads into a renowned research tradition that has long overshadowed them. The program's primary creators -- Knapp, David and former Dean of the Krieger School Herbert Kessler -- hoped that the fellowship could heal Hopkins' image of a "polarization of the school's research and teaching missions," Kessler reflects.

The lure has worked: the program attracts about 90-135 applications from high school seniors each year. Applicants complete a two paragraph proposal for either the natural sciences, the social sciences or the humanities.

Senior Melissa Floca voices the sentiment that Hopkins expected in students: "If there hadn't been a program for freshmen, then I probably wouldn't have gone here," says Floca, who applied to the Wilson after receiving the brochure in the mail -- and only then applied to Hopkins. She, like other potential fellows, was drawn by the opportunity for independent study. After thinking for a couple hours, her "vague" two paragraph proposal suggested researching the link between water scarcity and violence in developing countries.

"Maybe it's in some ways premature [to promise a freshman $10,000], because when you start, you don't have a clue. But they try to award the grant to people who have the potential to create a project," she says. She has been nothing but impressed by her Wilson peers. The fellowship does a good job of identifying people who are, she says, "incredible."

The first fellows

The fellowship takes faith in the inexperienced and aspiring and strives to mold them into researchers. The first three-professor selection committee convened the spring of 1999 to review a "diverse and talented" applicant pool of high school seniors touting ideas "most vague and in need of structure," remembers committee member Karl Alexander. He reviewed the 30-45 social science applications.

Most natural science applicants surprised the committee with extensive background experience, but applications for the social sciences and humanities were, at best, fuzzy. The idea, however, is to identify "diamonds in the rough and help them mature intellectually," Alexander says.

The committee finally selected 60 students and made phone calls to further entice the natural science fellows to choose Hopkins. Twenty-five of the 60 students matriculated, and sophomores later applied for the remaining spots.

The 25 freshmen and 10 sophomores that began that fall were the first Wilson fellows, and the guinea pigs for a pilot program that gives students the reins, the resources and the faculty connections to create unique projects and make their own calls. The 10 sophomores graduated in the Class of 2002; the first full Wilson class graduated last May.

Even those who didn't matriculate showed the pilot program was working as an attraction. David smiles remembering one applicant two years ago who was torn between attending Princeton or attending Hopkins as a Wilson fellow. She finally ended up choosing Princeton, but lamented leaving the Wilson program so much that she donated $5,000 to the fund.

Funding Wilson

The glittering stipend remains the trademark lure of the Wilson fellowships, but the program has not been exempt from tough financial times. The founding donation expired after the first three years, and the fellowship has had to downsize from 30 (20 freshmen, 10 sophomores) to 20 (15 freshmen, 5 sophomores) incoming students each year.

The Office of Development and Alumni Relations is now in charge of seeking donors to maintain the $200,000 program. They hope to eventually create an endowment, says Program Coordinator Suzie Bacon, but for now, the office is simply looking to keep the program afloat.

"It's a sign of the program's success and the school's commitment to the program that it's only been reduced by this amount," she says. David will not shrink the program any further for risk of damaging the nature of the program, but he says the hope is always for "more donors."

Hopkins alum have begun supporting the program. Mindy Farber ("74) graduated from the first co-ed class at Hopkins and now, with a daughter and nephew at Homewood and herself joining her husband as Chair of the Parents Association, has become a donor. William Strizever ("72) became a donor after joining the Second Decade Society.

However, it will take more than individual donors to endow the program. "I intend to donate again [...] but a donation of the magnitude I made can not be frequently made," Strizever says.

The rivalry grows

Despite fewer spots, the allure of money and opportunity continues to draw students, and the competition has grown. Each year, over 100 high schoolers continue to apply for the fellowship despite the drop in freshman spots from 20 to 15.The committee still receives the most applications in the natural and social sciences and coaxes potential humanities majors to create projects and apply.

High school seniors still get the priority and the majority, however, and rising sophomores apply later for the remaining spots: 5 now, instead of 10.

Sophomores typically apply with a "more focused research plan," remembers Daniel Reich, who reviewed natural science applications for the first selection committee, but their battle is more rigorous: they compete for fewer spots and receive less money.

It's a policy some freshman applicants voiced as unfair: They say that high school seniors are young, with little research experience, little relationship with the faculty and a lot of money in their pocket. "If they can prepare excellent proposals, they shouldn't have to face such a marginal chance of being accepted to the program," says sophomore Omar Itum, who applied to the fellowship last year.

Rising sophomores must wait for all incoming freshmen to accept their Wilson invitations on May 1. If too many freshmen accept, fewer sophomores can join -- last year, there were over 20 applications for only three remaining spots.

(The last two spots did later reopen when two of the 17 freshmen deferred entrance to the 2004-5 year.)

The $10,000 freshman stipend is calculated on $2,500 per year, and so sophomore year inductees only get $7,500. The spots for sophomores are announced in early summer, too late, David says, "to pursue their project in a meaningful way."

The road ahead

Once students are in, all the stages of research development lie before them.

"The bad experiences for people come during their freshman and sophomore years when they're at that overwhelming part of project," Floca remembers.

There have been fellows who have dropped out, too stressed by their courses to take on the responsibility of grant money. Sometimes, "students have concerned us," Bacon says, but with them, she and David will work "especially closely."

Sophomore fellow Travis Crum feels that one of the program's strengths is precisely that it does students go at their "own pace." Fellows receive preliminary advising from Bacon and David, are coached to find appropriate faculty sponsors and recently began meeting with upperclassmen Wilson mentors, but there is "no pressure" freshman year to solidify any plans. Crum recently changed his project from the influence of news media on public opinion to looking at the economic influence of the oil industry. He said he is still looking for an advisor with expertise in energy politics.

Fellowship rules require three signatures on every expense sheet: the student's faculty mentor, Bacon's and David's, but there is no benchmark for the rate that students should spend their money or complete their research. Fellows can use their money for any relevant travel, fees or equipment, including library permits, laptops and camera.

For those students who travel, a research trip can be a vacation as well: Floca spent a couple days on the beach during her trip to South Africa over Intersession, but its all part of the experience.

"It's to your own advantage to use the money the right way," she notes. Between her trips to Panama, South Africa, Cuba and the Balkans and an internship in DC, she says she has used her grant money to its fullest. Additionally, fellows must return any equipment bought with grant money to the program.

"This is not a tourism program. The spending must be contextualized," David asserts.

"Extraordinary stuff"

David remains discontent with the social disunity within the program, saying that although participants are united in the passion for research, he wishes he could foster "a tighter sense of community between the Wilsons."

Overall, though, David says he's proud of the evolving program. "These students have done some extraordinary stuff," he says.