Honors Summer Fellowship

The Honors Summer Fellowship offers the unique opportunity for students to spend a summer in Ann Arbor to focus on their thesis or Honors in Engaged Liberal Arts (HELA) work. Utilizing the HSF community, students have the opportunity to research, make new faculty connections, attend student gatherings and engage in public scholarship.

Sessions: June 3 - July 22 (every Tuesday afternoon)

The Summer 2025 Application opens on January 6, 2025 at noon.

HSF students gathered for their Poster Session

What is the Honors Summer Fellowship?

The Fellows program provides a unique opportunity for a group of upper-division students to gather from across all major categories of LSA; the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Participants learn from one another about the nature of research across a wide range of disciplines, comparing the modes of work, nature of valid evidence, styles of presentation, and special challenges. It is an unusual opportunity to reclaim the interdisciplinary interactions which play such an important role in a genuine liberal arts education at a time in your studies when many influences push you to specialize.

Honors Summer Fellows will be brought together in an interdisciplinary cohort for eight weeks in Ann Arbor during the summer. Fellows will spend most of this time engaged in the full-time pursuit of their thesis or HELA projects. In addition, all Fellows will meet together for mandatory two-hour sessions each week with the Honors Director and specialized Student Instructors. Fellows will be expected to play an active role in designing these sessions. At the end of the fellowship, Fellows will attend a Poster Session, where they will have the opportunity to showcase their research with their peers.

All Fellows will be expected to devote significant time to their thesis projects through the term of the fellowship. Fellows are allowed to work a maximum of 20 hours a week in an external position. In-person attendance is required throughout the entirety of the program.

Students taking a summer course are ineligible to apply.

Students will be awarded $10,000 for the eight-week program. International students are eligible for Honors Summer Fellowship funding.

Eligibility & Requirements

Eligibility:

Interested students may be engaged at any stage of their thesis work, from exploration of a thesis topic to advanced research at the core of an established project.

Applicants will typically be third-year students advancing to their senior year. In many departments, they will have already declared an Honors major, though in others this will not yet have happened. In some cases, students advance rapidly enough to begin serious thesis research after their second year. Applicants who have just finished their second year should be sure to explain why they feel they would benefit from this program at an unusually early stage.

Requirements:

The program has four requirements, all intended to enhance the senior thesis experience for Fellows and to enhance the visibility of the thesis process within the Honors Program.

All Fellows will spend the 8 weeks of the program engaged in disciplined pursuit of their theses.
All Fellows will be active participants in weekly meetings of the Fellows cohort, providing insight and support to other Fellow’s work.
Fellows must be in residence in Ann Arbor for the program's duration.
During the summer, Fellows will reflect on the thesis process and their progress in a manner intended to make explicit the tacit knowledge which characterizes expertise.

This will include producing:

A well prepared and delivered research presentation – this will be done in a format appropriate for a scholarly setting.

A piece of public scholarship describing your project – something suitable for explaining the content and importance of their research to a lay audience.

How to Apply

To apply, Honors students must provide the following:

A Resume
An Unofficial Transcript, which may be downloaded from your Wolverine Access Student Portal. (Please do not request a protected copy from the Office of the Registrar.)
A 1000-1500 word Statement of Purpose, describing your thesis project and its current status, along with what you’re hoping to gain from participating in the interdisciplinary fellows program.
A completed Endorsement Form from an appropriate faculty member. This does NOT need to be a formal letter. An email to the faculty endorser containing relevant applicant information, a summary of questions, and the form link will be generated when the application is completed. We strongly encourage you to confirm your faculty endorser's willingness to do this before starting your application.
The application closes March 10th, 2025.