Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Encyclopedia
The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is a private non-profit operating foundation
Foundation (charity)
A foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations that will typically either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the source of funding for its own charitable purposes....

 based in Princeton
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...

, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

. It administers programs that support leadership development and build organizational capacity in education. Its current signature program is the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship. It also continues to support a range of other programs.

Early years (1945–1957)

The first Woodrow Wilson Fellowships were created by Dr. Whitney “Mike” Oates, a Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 classics professor who served in the Marine Corps during World War II. During his tour of duty, Professor Oates realized that many of his brightest undergraduates who had served in the armed forces were unlikely to go on to doctoral study and college teaching careers when the war was over. As the G.I. Bill took shape, however, it was clear that college enrollments would expand, and the ranks of qualified college instructors must grow.

Oates and the Princeton graduate dean, Sir Hugh Taylor, developed a program of fellowships funded by various individual donors to help recruit veterans to Princeton’s Ph.D. programs in the humanities. In 1945, these fellowships were combined into one program and named for Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

, a champion of teaching and of graduate studies during his tenure as president of Princeton. The Woodrow Wilson Fellowships provided full funding for Ph.D. studies, with the proviso that recipients plan a career in college teaching.

Other universities and national funders began to recognize the importance of recruiting future college professors. In 1947, Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding," is one of the oldest, largest and most influential of American foundations...

 provided $100,000 to expand the program to selected universities nationwide. Gradually the program broadened to extend eligibility beyond veterans, in fields other than the humanities. In 1951 the Fellowship program was placed under the administration of the Association of Graduate Schools. In the same year, the first women were granted Woodrow Wilson Fellowships.

In 1953 Robert F. Goheen
Robert F. Goheen
Robert Francis Goheen was an American academic, president of Princeton University and United States Ambassador to India.-Biography:...

, who had been one of the first four Woodrow Wilson Fellows in 1945, became national director of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Program, expanding the program to 200 fellowships nationally. Over the next several years, other funders, including the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

, also supported the program.

The national Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1957–1974)

In 1957, the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

 provided a five-year, $24.5 million grant to support up to 1,000 Woodrow Wilson Fellowships annually, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation was independently incorporated. Fellowships were offered across the range of arts and sciences. Overall, during the following decade—including two renewal grants, in 1962 and 1966—the Fellowships received $52 million in Ford Foundation support, providing both awards to Fellows and supplemental support to the graduate schools hosting them.

Throughout these years, a rigorous interview process was the hallmark of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Professors nominated or recommended promising seniors, and applications underwent review at the Foundation, with finalists examined by regional panels on campuses around the country. A 1960 TIME magazine article proclaimed, “The Woodrow Wilson Fellowship is fast becoming a domestic version of the Rhodes Scholarship.”

Foundation policies stipulated that candidates could not hold both the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and other, similar fellowships for doctoral study. Some candidates, after successfully completing the intensive interviews, declined the Woodrow Wilson Fellowships to accept Rhodes Scholarships, National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

 fellowships, and other such awards. These candidates were allowed designation as honorary Woodrow Wilson Fellows.

In addition to the full Woodrow Wilson Fellowships, various complementary awards were offered during the 1960s and early 1970s. These included Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowships, offered to supplement the original award for Fellows who required dissertation support; Teaching and Administrative Internships, designed to engage graduate students and young administrators with the nation’s historically black colleges and universities
Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Historically black colleges and universities are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before 1964 with the intention of serving the black community....

; and Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellowships, specifically intended for African American veterans of the armed forces. The mix of a signature fellowship with complementary programs to create access and capacity in the nation’s education system became a pattern for later Woodrow Wilson Foundation activities.

By the early 1970s full funding for the Woodrow Wilson Fellowships had diminished, and, over the concluding several years of the program, the Foundation reduced both the number and amount of awards. By the time the original Woodrow Wilson Fellowship program ended, nearly 18,000 Fellows had been named. Woodrow Wilson Fellows went on to receive 13 Nobel Prizes, 35 MacArthur
MacArthur Fellows Program
The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T...

 “genius grants," 11 Pulitzer Prizes, 21 Presidential Medals, and many other awards.

Other higher education fellowships at Woodrow Wilson (1974-present)

As the original large-scale Woodrow Wilson Fellowships came to an end, the Foundation still sought to provide opportunity in higher education for specific groups of students. Following a precedent set by some of the Foundation’s earlier supplementary fellowships, the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies, created in 1974, not only bolstered the growth of feminist scholarship across the humanities and social sciences, but also supported primarily women scholars completing Ph.D.s in these fields at a time when women were significantly underrepresented in doctoral study.

In the 1980s and 1990s the Woodrow Wilson Foundation continued to encourage work in targeted academic disciplines. The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, funded by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, still supports completion of Ph.D. work on ethical or religious values in any field of the humanities or social sciences. Other Woodrow Wilson programs created during 1980s and 1990s to strengthen specific academic fields included the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities (1982–2006) and the Spencer Dissertation Fellowships in Education (1987–1992).

During the same period, the Foundation also established fellowships in higher education to encourage preparation for specific national high-need fields such as women’s health and public policy and international affairs. Continuing today, the Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowships, named for U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, support both graduate and undergraduate preparation for the U.S. Foreign Service. In exchange for significant financial support in their undergraduate or graduate programs of study, Pickering Fellows make a commitment to serve at least three years in the U.S. Foreign Service. Since the program’s inception, the Pickering Fellowships have supported more than 450 students, most of whom have gone on to distinguished careers in the U.S. Foreign Service.

From time to time Woodrow Wilson fellowships have also provided support for individuals at particular stages of their careers in higher education, such as the Millicent McIntosh Fellowships for Recently Tenured Faculty and the Woodrow Wilson Academic Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Humanities.

Professional development for teachers (1974-present)

During the years after the original Woodrow Wilson Fellowships, the Foundation also launched various programs to cultivate and support teachers at the middle- and high-school levels, as well as in college. The earliest of these was the Woodrow Wilson Teacher Fellowship (1974–1981). Though limited in scope, serving just 42 teachers, it paved the way for the subsequent Leadership Program for Teachers (1982–2003), which brought more than 2,400 teachers into summer enrichment programs with university faculty. The related Woodrow Wilson National Network of Seminars for Teachers, begun in 1999 as Teachers as Scholars, also offers professional development, bringing teachers back to university campuses for intensive seminars in their disciplines with leading arts and sciences faculty. These programs would serve as precursors to the more recent Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship.

Organizational capacity in K-12 and higher education (1974-present)

Some of the earliest work of the initial Woodrow Wilson Fellowships required building new networks and capacities in higher education. Subsequent programs made this focus on organizational capacity more explicit.

In the 1970s, the Rockefeller Foundation and other funders supported a program of Woodrow Wilson Teaching and Administrative Internships that brought graduate students to historically black colleges and universities, seeking both to strengthen HBCUs’ faculty and to provide these young scholars and leaders with campus-based experience.

A separate program of the same era, the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows, created a “speakers bureau” that brought national leaders in for week-long residencies on small campuses at a distance from major metropolitan areas, working one-on-one and in small groups with students and faculty. The Council for Independent Colleges now manages this ongoing program.

During the 1990s, troubled by the apparent and growing mismatch between liberal arts doctoral education and the academic and nonacademic job markets, the Foundation created a suite of programs that included the Humanities at Work and the Responsive Ph.D.. The former sought both to widen potential nonacademic employers’ understanding of the skills offered by individuals with doctoral-level humanities backgrounds and, within the academy, to encourage both graduate students’ and faculty’s appreciation for the role of the humanities in a larger socioeconomic context. The related Responsive Ph.D. initiative created a network of institutions committed to rethinking graduate education in a way that aligned doctoral graduates’ preparation more fully with the academic careers awaiting them.

As in its individual work with K-12 teachers, the Foundation also, in the early 2000s, turned its attention to building networks and capacity among high schools. Through the Woodrow Wilson Early College Initiative, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates. It is "driven by the interests and passions of the Gates family"...

, the Foundation drew on its higher education networks to create small middle and high schools through a series of school-university partnerships. These schools—part of a national Early College network serving high-need, low-income students—created models for preparing all students in a school to attend and graduate college. The WW Early College strategy includes dual enrollment, academic rigor, practical skills coaching, and on-campus experience.

The Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships (2007–present)

In 2007, under the new leadership of Arthur Levine, the board and staff of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation reassessed the organization’s connection to national needs in education. The Foundation concluded that the achievement gap
Achievement gap
Achievement gap refers to the observed disparity on a number of educational measures between the performance of groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The achievement gap can be observed on a variety of measures, including standardized...

 was perhaps the nation’s most urgent education need, not only at the K-12 level but also for institutions of higher education, which are dependent on college-ready students, and for society at large, which requires a well-educated, sophisticated workforce drawn from all socioeconomic backgrounds.

Based on numerous studies indicating that the presence of a well-prepared teacher is the single most important factor in student achievement, the Foundation created the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship to serve as its signature program for the near- to mid-term. The Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship is intended to recruit exceptionally well-qualified individuals into teaching in high-need urban and rural secondary schools, as well as to transform the way in which they are prepared to teach.

The WW Teaching Fellowship was launched in 2007 in two versions. One version funded by the Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Foundation
The Annenberg Foundation is a private foundation that provides funding and support to non-profit organizations in the United States and around the world...

, the Leonore Annenberg Teaching Fellowship, was implemented at four selected national universities—Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and the Universities of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

, and Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

—that showcase excellence in teacher preparation. In the other, state-based model, Fellows enroll in an intensive master’s-level teacher preparation program at one of a designated group of universities. The universities, in exchange for receiving exceptional teacher candidates and a matching grant, agree to rethink their teacher preparation programs, emphasizing classroom experience from the early phases of the program. A third related program, the Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship for Aspiring Teachers of Color, was transferred to the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in 2009 by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund , , is an international philanthropic organisation created and run by members of the Rockefeller family. It was set up in New York City in 1940 as the primary philanthropic vehicle of the five famous Rockefeller brothers: John D...

. Fellows across all three programs receive $30,000 stipends and enroll in teacher preparation programs designated by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

The state-based model of the WW Teaching Fellowship was first implemented as the Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellowship in December 2007 with the support of Lilly Endowment and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels
Mitch Daniels
Mitchell Elias "Mitch" Daniels, Jr. is the 49th and current Governor of the U.S. state of Indiana. A Republican, he began his first four-year term as governor on January 10, 2005, and was elected to his second term by an 18-point margin on November 4, 2008. Previously, he was the Director of the...

. Two additional states, Michigan and Ohio, signed on in late 2009 and 2010, creating, respectively, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellowship, endorsed by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
Jennifer Granholm
Jennifer Mulhern Granholm is a Canadian-born American politician, educator, and author who served as Attorney General and 47th Governor of the U.S. state of Michigan. A member of the Democratic Party, Granholm became Michigan's first female governor on January 1, 2003, when she succeeded Governor...

, and the Woodrow Wilson Ohio Teaching Fellowship, endorsed by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland
Ted Strickland
Theodore "Ted" Strickland was the 68th Governor of Ohio, serving from 2007 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the United States House of Representatives, representing ....

 and supported by the Ohio Board of Regents’ Choose Ohio First program, with additional funds from a statewide group of private philanthropies. The Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio programs all focus specifically on teacher preparation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, also known as the STEM fields.

The first group of Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellows completed the first phase of their work in summer 2010. The Michigan and Ohio programs will name their first classes in 2011. Other states are in discussion about creating similar programs. President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

cited the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship as a model of STEM teacher preparation in a January 2010 speech focused on his administration’s Educate to Innovate initiative.

Ongoing higher education fellowships

In addition to its teacher preparation activities, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation continues to offer a suite of fellowships that prepare emerging scholars and leaders for success in the American academy and in several high-need fields. These include the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowships (graduate and undergraduate), the Doris Duke Conservation Fellows Program, and others. Funds for general studies beyond the scope of these programs are not available from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

Schools and college readiness

The Foundation also continues its capacity-building work in high schools, building on expertise developed with the Woodrow Wilson Early Colleges. Seventeen schools currently exist in the formal Woodrow Wilson Early College network, with another half-dozen schools and districts partnering with Woodrow Wilson to implement the approach in various ways.

Woodrow Wilson Foundation Leadership

The president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College, Columbia University. The 35-member Woodrow Wilson Board of Trustees is chaired by Frederick L.A. Grauer, senior adviser to BlackRock, Inc. and a 1969 Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation is an operating foundation supported by a range of public and private funders.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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