The Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation) is a nonpartisan,
non-profit
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
based in
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...
,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
that aims to strengthen American democracy by “cultivating the talent, ideas, and networks that develop lifelong, effective citizens.” It administers programs that support civic education and engagement, leadership development, and organizational capacity in education and democracy.
In June 2020, the Board of Trustees of the foundation voted unanimously to remove Woodrow Wilson from its name citing his racist policies and beliefs. In November 2020, the organization was renamed ''The Institute for Citizens & Scholars''.
History
Early years (1945–1957)
The first Woodrow Wilson Fellowships were created by Dr. Whitney "Mike" Oates, a
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
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
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
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
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
, 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
The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Carnegie Corporation has endowed or otherwise helped to establis ...
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 Francis Goheen (August 15, 1919 – March 31, 2008) was an American academic, president of Princeton University and United States Ambassador to India.
Biography
Robert Francis Goheen was born on August 15, 1919, to Anne (Ewing) and D ...
, 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
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...
, also supported the program.
The national Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1957–1974)
In 1957, the
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
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.""Education: Search for Professors" (March 21, 1960), ''TIME Magazine.''
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
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
,
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
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 (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American 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
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfre ...
Pulitzer Prizes
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made hi ...
, 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 the 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.
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 of 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
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was l ...
, 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.
Current activities
Higher Education Fellowships
In 2007, under the new leadership of Arthur Levine, the board and staff concluded that the
achievement gap
Achievement may refer to:
* Achievement (heraldry)
*Achievement (horse), a racehorse
* Achievement (video gaming), a meta-goal defined outside of a game's parameters
See also
* Achievement test for student assessment
* Achiever, a personality t ...
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."Foundation Hopes to Lure Top Students to Teaching" (December 20, 2007), ''The New York Times.'' One version funded by the
Annenberg Foundation
The Annenberg Foundation is a family foundation that provides funding and support to non-profit organizations in the United States and around the world. Some of the Foundation's core initiatives are the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcast ...
, the Leonore Annenberg Teaching Fellowship, was implemented at four selected national universities—
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
and the Universities of
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
,
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
, and
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...
—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
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) is a philanthropic foundation created and run by members of the Rockefeller family. It was founded in New York City in 1940 as the primary philanthropic vehicle for the five third-generation Rockefeller brothe ...
. 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
Mitchell Elias Daniels Jr. (born April 7, 1949) is an American academic administrator, businessman, author, and retired politician. A Republican, Daniels served as the 49th governor of Indiana from 2005 to 2013. Since 2013, Daniels has been pr ...
. 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 Mulhern Granholm (born February 5, 1959) is a Canadian-American lawyer, educator, author, political commentator, and politician serving as the 16th United States secretary of energy since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, she pre ...
, and the Woodrow Wilson Ohio Teaching Fellowship, endorsed by Ohio Governor
Ted Strickland
Theodore Strickland (born August 4, 1941) is an American politician who 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.
In addition to its teacher preparation activities, the organization 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 Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, a suite of fellowships funded by the
Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...
, and others.
The Civic Spring Fellowship
The Civic Spring Fellowship awards grants to young people or members of youth-centered organizations who are working on projects that address a local community need, such as public health or local elections. Fellows work in communities across the country while building skills to continue engaging and driving meaningful change for the long term.
Institute for Citizens & Scholars Leadership
The president of the organization is Rajiv Vinnakota, former Executive Vice-President of the
Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. The institute's stated aim is the realization of "a free, just, and equitable society" through seminars, policy programs ...
and co-founder of the
SEED Foundation
The SEED Foundation (also often referred to as the SEED Schools) is a 501(c)(3) organization, established in 1997 to provide boarding school college-preparatory educational opportunities to underserved students.online
* George, Gerald. "Wilson dissertation fellowships: An experiment with speed." ''Journal of Higher Education'' 42.1 (1971): 56-63.
* Mooney, Joseph D. "Attrition among Ph. D. candidates: An analysis of a cohort of recent Woodrow Wilson fellows." ''Journal of Human Resources'' (1968): 47-6 online
* Rosenhaupt, Hans. "The Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Program: Achievements and Problems: 1958 to 1963." ''Journal of Higher Education'' 35.5 (1964): 239-246.
* Rosenhaupt, Hans. "Participation of Negroes in Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Programs." (ERIC, 1968) online
* Taylor, Andress, and John A. Sekora. "The Woodrow Wilson teaching internship program: A case study." ''Journal of General Education'' (1967): 202-215 online