Context: Scholars apply for funding, grants, and fellowships to not only earn prestige and put their accomplishments on their resumes, but to earn money to help them complete their important research. Applying for awards is an important part of scholarship that often requires scholars to explain their work to an internal or external funding committee to win a prize. (Internal means a group within your school; external means a group outside of it.)

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to give you experience writing a very important academic genre—the funding (award, grant, fellowship) application. This gives you a chance to not only crystallize your own ideas about Black studies—since many awards will ask you to talk about a specific research problem you are working on—but it will also give you confidence writing in a meaningful genre that can be scary for scholars to explore. Of course this can also lead to tangible financial awards that can help your research and get you closer to landing an important job!

Advice: All applications for funding will likely be different and will likely call for different skills. But here are some general guidelines that can help you put your best foot forward:

• Plan in advance
• Know your audience
• Follow the instructions
• Choose a topic you’re passionate about¹.
• Identify a gap in the research
• Pick a specific research problem
• Explain how that research problem matters
• Define your terms clearly
• Show how your work is different from other work
• Write multiple drafts
• Ask a friend to look your work over
• Start early
• If the application requires a letter of recommendation, ask at least 2 weeks in advance (If you ask me, ask 4 weeks in advance)

Pre-work: Find an award, fellowship, grant, etc… broadly related to Black studies. (I am open to awards outside Black studies, but please clear them with me first and explain how you can tangentially tie them to our class’s theme.) The award should require a writing component–an essay or personal statement or something like that. You can find awards here.

Update your google portfolio with the award you’ll apply for and write a brief statement listing three goals from the Funding Application Bank. Explain how you plan on meeting the goals.

The pre-work is due one week after our meeting to the library to discuss funding, which is currently TBD.

Task: Apply to an award

Post-work: Reflect on your application and how you accomplished the goals you set for yourself. Explain what went well and what you could do better next time.

1. The following are from Mailhot, Brittany, “13 Tips to Bring Your Scholarship Essay to the Next Level,” https://www.goingmerry.com/blog/scholarship-essay-tips/, accessed Jan 14, 2020.