Description and objectives: The Dr. John N. Nicholson Fellowship provides financial support for outstanding Northwestern graduate students enrolled in PhD and MS programs in the sciences or engineering and PhD programs in Management. Preference is given to applicants of Greek extraction or descent.
The fellowships are named for Dr. John N. Nicholson, a physician who practiced in the Chicago area for more than 50 years. A leader in the Greek-American community, Dr. Nicholson established an endowment at Northwestern University to support academically superior and highly motivated graduate students in selected fields.
Award amount: The Dr. John N. Nicholson Fellowship provides full tuition payment and a stipend for 9 months at the same rate as a University Fellowship.
Award period: The fellowship is awarded for three quarters beginning in Fall quarter 2010. Awards are for one academic year only, but awardees may reapply.
Eligibility: Northwestern students enrolled in the following programs are eligible to apply: MS or PhD programs in basic sciences, such as chemistry and physics; biotechnology; engineering; and PhD programs in Management. Recipients of the fellowships must be US citizens.
Department approval: Electronic submission of an application by the designated department or program person (see below) constitutes confirmation that the application has been vetted and endorsed by the department or program. There are no restrictions on the number of applications that an individual department may submit.
Deadline and Notification dates: Check with the department in which you are enrolled for the department deadline. Departments should set their own deadlines to allow department nominators time to prepare applications for electronic submission. The deadline for departments to submit applications to The Graduate School is 12:00 noon on Friday, January 8, 2010. Applicants will be notified of the results of the competition in April.
Review Process
Applications will be evaluated by a faculty committee who will make recommendations to the Dean of The Graduate School.
Application process
The materials described below must be collected into a single pdf file and submitted by the person designated to be the TGS nominator for your department or program. Applications not adhering to the word limit and format restrictions will not be considered.
Materials required: The required materials are to be submitted in the following order. Pages may be single- or double-spaced.
The completed application form.
A statement of purpose that includes a description of your career goals (500 words).
A curriculum vita that includes education, professional experience, awards, presentations, publications, and professional memberships.
An unofficial Northwestern transcript. Unofficial transcripts may be obtained from CAESAR. After logging in to CAESAR, you can view your unofficial transcript by selecting “For Students” then “Academic Information” then “View Unofficial Transcript.” Select “Switch to printer-friendly view” from the upper right hand screen. To save your unofficial transcript as an electronic document, cut and paste the entire transcript into a Word (or equivalent) file.
Applicant’s responsibilities: The student applying for the fellowship is responsible for preparing items 1-4 above as electronic documents and providing these to the designated nominator for the department or program.
Department nominator’s responsibilities: The designated department or program nominator is responsible for assembling all the documents, including the applicant’s unofficial transcript, into a single pdf file and submitting the application to The Graduate School through the web interface.
Instructions for web site: Each department or program should have a designated person who submits the pdf file through the web interface. This would normally be the Chair, Director of Graduate Studies or Program Assistant. This person should contact Bill Rett, IT Manager for The Graduate School, for access to the system or for other related technical questions (847/491-8538, tgs-it@northwestern.edu ). For other questions, please contact Lesley Perry (847/491-7332, l-perry2@northwestern.edu).
To submit the application the nominator should go to https://fellowships.gsad.northwestern.edu and use her/his current netid and password to log into the site. [Note: You may receive a security certificate error. If so, please click "continue to this website (not recommended)"]
After logging in, the designated submitter should:
1. From the list of awards on the right, select "Nicholson - Dr. John N Nicholson Fellowship"
2. Click "add application", found on the left hand side
3. Select the current term
4. Search for student first as "existing applicant" by student ID/ Last Name (Be sure to select PhD for students with multiple listings by clicking on the icon in the "view" column), if student is not listen, then select "new applicant".
5. If fields do not pre-populate, then fill out program information and required fields manually. Click "next"
6. Enter research topic
7. For Program, select the "school" and "academic organization" that is nominating the student by clicking the icon to the right of the box.
8. To upload application, click "Browse" to select the assembled pdf file. You must then click "upload application"
9. Click "finish
Finally, send an email to gradfund@northwestern.edu with the name of the student whose application was uploaded so we can double check that the submission of the application was successful.
