The Witherspoon Institute
Undergraduate Fellowship Program
As part of the Witherspoon Institute’s mission to form the next generation of scholars, the Undergraduate Fellowship Program is an intercollegiate community of undergraduates interested in how university education fosters the development of the human person’s rational and moral dimensions. This program offers to exceptional students from a variety of academic disciplines (whether from the natural or social sciences, the humanities, or the fine arts) a collection of opportunities to put to better use the resources available to them at their own universities. These opportunities include:
- The First Principles Seminar. Since the summer of 2005 the Witherspoon Institute has brought the First Principles Seminar to the campus of Princeton University in order to help undergraduate and first-year graduate students learn about critical topics in the principles of the natural law and their application to contemporary political and social thought. For summer 2008, the Witherspoon Institute announces a dual-focus First Principles Seminar on “Aquinas’s Treatise on Law in Context” and “The New Natural Law and Its Critics” (link). Undergraduate Fellows who apply to the seminar will be given first priority in admissions deliberations.
- Witherspoon Undergraduate Research Internships. The Witherspoon Institute will offer three summer research internships for our undergraduate fellows. These internships are designed to give students an opportunity to assist the Institute’s scholars with research in topics of moral thought, do research in their own academic field, contribute to the organization of Institute’s seminars and conference, and become more involved in the larger mission of the Witherspoon Institute. For more information about interning at the Witherspoon Institute, please contact Patrick Hough at phough@winst.org. (4/25/08: Please note that all internship positions for the summer of 2008 have been filled.)
- Undergraduate Fellows Colloquium. The Witherspoon Institute will hold the first annual Undergraduate Fellows Colloquium on Saturday, April 5, 2008 at Whelan Hall in Princeton, New Jersey. This event will bring the Undergraduate Fellows together for the first time to discuss the nature of university education, principled inquiry, and the pursuit of truth in specific academic disciplines. This colloquium will be led by Professors Robert P. George (Department of Politics, Princeton University), Harold James (History Department and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University), Marzenna James (Lecturer, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University), Christopher Tollefsen (Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina), and Maureen Condic (University of Utah School of Medicine) . The Witherspoon Institute will arrange participating students’ room and board. All undergraduate fellows are encouraged to attend.
The Undergraduate Fellowship Program plays a further role in the early work of its scholars by bringing them into contact with the Institute’s Senior Fellows and visiting scholars through the events and publications of the Witherspoon Institute.
The application to the Undergraduate Fellowship Program of the Witherspoon Institute must contain the following:
- The application form found here
- A curriculum vitae of your undergraduate career
- A written recommendation by an undergraduate professor
- A short writing sample (between four and six pages in length) on how a university education should foster the development of the human person’s rational and moral dimensions.
Applicants will be notified within one week regarding their acceptance into the fellowship. Materials should be sent via email to Patrick Hough (phough@winst.org) or via post to:
The Witherspoon Institute
16 Stockton Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
USA
Updated April 25, 2008