Academic and Student Affairs

Eligibility

• Students who will have finished two or more years of doctoral study at MSU by May 2025 are eligible (students who have only completed one year of doctoral study by May are eligible for the Summer Research Development Fellowship).
• Students who have progressed to the dissertation stage by Summer 2025 are not eligible for an SRF, but are eligible for a DCF. Specifically, if a student expects to pass their dissertation proposal prior to Summer 2025, they should apply for a DCF for Summer 2025 rather than an SRF.

Terms of Award

• $7000 fellowship disbursed by the College of Education during Spring or early Summer semester.
• Under federal law, a student must be enrolled in at least one credit during the semester they receive the fellowship.¹
• A student may receive multiple SRFs over subsequent summers, but only one in a given summer.
• The SRF supports two months of full-time work during the three-month summer.
• Students may work and take classes while receiving an SRF (prior to 2021, this was prohibited).
• Students who are not able to commit to the equivalent of two months of full-time work due to other commitments should contact the Office of Academic and Student Affairs when accepting the fellowship, or when they become aware of this, so that it can be pro-rated.
• Students are expected to submit a short report by the end of summer, Friday August 15, 2025, summarizing their accomplishments.
• College of Education faculty mentors who oversee a student’s project receive a $500 honorarium. Co-mentors will share this allocation. Mentors no longer need to indicate their willingness to participate.

¹ If a student plans to receive the fellowship during summer semester, the student must be enrolled during summer semester. If a student will not be enrolled during summer, then the fellowship will be initiated in the late Spring for use during the Summer if and only if issuing the fellowship during the spring would have an adverse impact on the student’s financial aid the College will pay for 1 credit of summer enrollment for any student who needs to take their fellowship in summer due to impact on financial aid.

Submission, selection, and key dates

• Students submit an application to the College via this link by November 1, 2024, at noon.
• Two teams of five members (one faculty member appointed by each department and the Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs) read and rate all applications.
• One team will review applications from those students finishing their second year, the other team will review applications from students finishing their third and fourth year.
• The Office of the Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs will compile the ratings and, based on the resulting rankings, determine which proposals will be funded.

Type of work to be funded

• The SRF may be used to collect data, analyze and write up previously collected research data, complete an ongoing project, or move it to the publication stage.
• The SRF also may be used to prepare an external dissertation funding request; prior to 2021, this was done through the SRRF, which is now part of this competition.
• The SRF is intended to support students’ original work or, possibly, a piece of a larger project which is assigned exclusively to the student. The SRF does not support graduate research assistantship assignments.

Application Requirements

1. Research proposal. Maximum 700 words (roughly 2-3 pages double spaced). The word count excludes frontmatter, appendices, and reference lists. The proposal should:
   • Include in the beginning frontmatter: (a) student name, (b) year in the program, (c) proposed mentor’s name, and (d) proposal word count.
   • Not use a separate title page;
   • Summarize the proposed research;
   • Indicate any deliverables: conference presentations, publication proposals, publication submissions, grant/ fellowship support proposals, etc.;
   • Bear the file name: SRF25Prop[Applicant’sLastNameFirstInitial].pdf.²
2. MSU transcript for all PhD program coursework.³ Save the transcript as a PDF and attach it to the research proposal after the last page before uploading the proposal.

² For example: SRF25PropBowmanK.pdf.

³ How to secure and insert your MSU transcript (submit only your PhD coursework): 1) go to student.msu.edu and navigate to the Academic Records tile; 2) Select View Unofficial Transcript; 3) Select Submit 4) Save the PDF and attach it to your SRF proposal PDF after the last page.  

Selection Criteria

Remember that you are writing for an audience in which most of the evaluators are not in your field. Developing the skill of writing a short proposal for a broad audience is especially important in grant writing. Evaluators are asked to consider how well the proposal:

• Is written and organized
• Demonstrates an understanding of the field and its direction
• Fits within the literature
• Describes a timely project
• Explains an ambitious project
• Presents an appropriate scope (2 months of full-time work)

Additionally, evaluators are asked to consider the strength of a student’s academic record.