Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Nationally Competitive Scholarships
    Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Nationally Competitive Scholarships
    Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Nationally Competitive Scholarships
    Ebook303 pages3 hours

    Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Nationally Competitive Scholarships

    By Suzanne McCray and Dana C. Kuchem

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Thousands of college students across the country apply each year for nationally and internationally competitive scholarships and grants. Different awards target different interests, career goals, and student qualifications. Advising students on how to choose the right award that will help launch them on their career path requires a nuanced understanding of scholarship opportunities. Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Nationally Competitive Scholarships provides key information from scholarship foundations and seasoned advice from campus advisors critically important for the faculty and staff who support students applying for these awards. This book will be a great resource for anyone advising students.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Arkansas Press
    Release dateJul 23, 2019
    ISBN9781610756778
    Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Nationally Competitive Scholarships

    Read more from Suzanne Mc Cray

    Related to Bridging the Gap

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Karunanidhi: Tamil Till The Last Breath

      Aug 10, 2018

      Muthuvel Karunanidhi's fight began early, with a refusal to learn to play the naadasvaram, his father's vocation. A young Karunanidhi was apparently angered when he saw his teacher remove his upper cloth to bow bare-chested before an upper-caste man.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Adolescent Plastic Surgery - Craze, Crazy Or Credible?

      Mar 8, 2022

      Teenage plastic surgery has been on the rise since 2003. While the trend was noted, the traditional medical dogma of not operating on patients younger than 18 remained the unofficial position of many surgical societies and their members. Mirroring th

      2 min read

    • Article

      What Makes Us Bold

      Mar 3, 2023

      Among the forests of Yellowstone National Park, some wolf packs share their territory with cougars. Generally, the two species leave each other alone, although wolves may occasionally run a cougar up a tree and steal its kill—or poke around its feces

      4 min read

    • Article

      Navigating The Inbetween

      Dec 4, 2020

      Navigating The Inbetween
      2 min read

    • Article

      How To Nail A Fail

      Mar 2, 2020

      How To Nail A Fail
      3 min read

    • Article

      Why Your Sexy Innovation Lab Is Failing

      Apr 8, 2018

      Innovation labs are springing up everywhere, being commonplace in industries from banking to the property sector, aimed at everything from improving productivity to showcasing new tech, creating new revenue streams or bolstering existing ones. For so

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Choice- Assorted Career

      Mar 23, 2020

      A Choice- Assorted Career
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Real Chill on Campus

      Jun 16, 2022

      The Real Chill on Campus
      7 min read

    • Article

      Caroliena Cabada

      Aug 18, 2021

      Caroliena Cabada
      5 min read

    • Article

      Valuing Volunteers

      Jul 19, 2019

      Valuing Volunteers
      3 min read

    • Article

      My Mfa Experience

      Aug 14, 2019

      My Mfa Experience
      37 min read

    • Article

      Ananda Lima

      Aug 18, 2021

      Ananda Lima
      5 min read

    • Article

      How to Actually Promote Diversity in STEM

      Nov 29, 2019

      The future depends on a robust scientific workforce, but millions of minority students are massively underrepresented in these fields.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Leaders In Graduate Education

      Jan 17, 2022

      Leaders In Graduate Education
      1 min read

    • Article

      Live And Learn

      Sep 1, 2022

      In 2019, this magazine launched its Education Awards to recognize the outstanding people, programs, and institutions in Palm Beach County’s academic community. It started as a small endeavor with an awards ceremony and panel discussion highlighting i

      2 min read

    • Article

      THE Human(e) IN Conservation

      Jun 7, 2022

      THE Human(e) IN Conservation
      3 min read

    • Article

      Navigating Life

      Feb 8, 2018

      Navigating Life
      3 min read

    • Article

      MFA in Mind

      Aug 15, 2018

      IT SEEMS everyone has advice for those considering an MFA in creative writing, including us (you can find plenty of helpful tips at pw.org). But advice is rarely universal, and the decision to pursue a graduate degree is one that requires individuali

      2 min read

    • Article

      Putting Your Best Foot Forward

      Apr 8, 2020

      IF YOU have ever applied for a writing fellowship, grant, or award you might have found yourself a little daunted by the application process. You might have been overwhelmed by all the pieces that must come together, the word counts that must be mind

      12 min read

    • Article

      2019 MFA Index

      Aug 15, 2018

      WITH well over two hundred MFA programs in the United States, choosing which ones to research, much less apply to, can be a daunting prospect. The 2019 MFA Index is designed to make that process easier by providing information about 158 full-residenc

      2 min read

    • Article

      I Say “Mentor”, You Say

      Sep 30, 2021

      …very little? Or, that mentorship only reinforces existing hierarchies? Wrong on both counts. In the arts, we tend to style ourselves as bastions of humanity, beauty and generosity. And yet, in Big Bad Corporate America there exist more examples of p

      2 min read

    • Article

      Decisions, Decisions

      Aug 16, 2023

      YOU’RE a writer, and you’ve decided to get your MFA. This choice will center writing in your life, give you a unique opportunity to develop your craft, and equip you with a degree for teaching or further education. I love this for you. Congratulation

      7 min read

    • Article

      IBPA Publishing University

      Aug 15, 2020

      IBPA Publishing University
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Bridging the Gap

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Bridging the Gap - Suzanne McCray

      director).

      Introduction

      This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Truman and Marshall Scholarships: Breaking the Code, a fellowships advisor workshop held in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in the summer of 1999. The conference focused mainly on two major scholarships but included information about others as well. That foray into advisor and foundation information sharing on multiple scholarships sparked the creation of the National Association of Fellowships Advisors (NAFA), officially launched a year later in Chicago by a group of fifteen advisors, most of whom had attended Breaking the Code. That first conference was about understanding the basics, comparing notes, reaching out directly to foundation members, breaking their codes. After twenty years, some of the same discussions are still relevant as scholarships change goals and requirements, as new awards like the Schwarzman have been added to the opportunities available to students, as advisors develop new competitive award programs for the first time on their campuses, or as new advisors accept a fellowships advising role (approximately one-third of advisors who are members of NAFA have held such a job less than three years). Breaking the code can still seem overwhelming to many. NAFA conferences and books like this one have helped provide what can seem to those just starting out as insider information, but what is actually an effort to create a framework for providing support for exceptional students seeking transformational opportunities to further their academic goals and their professional and personal aspirations.

      Those early days have been followed by deeper examinations of the work that both advisors and foundations do. Different conferences, as well as the resulting proceedings, have focused at least to some extent on different recurring themes: the value of the process (Beyond Winning), service (Serving Students and the Public Good), leadership (Leading the Way), access (All In), holistic approaches to serving students (All Before Them), and increasing the scope of awards (Roads Less Traveled). At the 2017 NAFA conference held in Philadelphia, attendees at the Mind the Gap–themed event were charged with considering the gaps that exist both in our advising practices and in the broader contexts that shape them, as well as how [advisors and foundations] might bridge or eliminate them. And it is the bridging of such gaps that the essays in this volume seek to do.

      The essays included in Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Nationally Competitive Scholarships are for the most part (though not exclusively) a product of presentations, roundtable discussions, and percolating ideas that were generated for or at the 2017 conference. The collection is divided into four parts. The first, Serving Students, expands the ways advisors can best support students through the creation of new learning opportunities, by reducing or eliminating bias in the recruitment and selection process, by giving students support and (equally important) space to continue to develop a sense of identity, and finally by allowing students to sink or swim on their own accord. The second, Best Practices for Advisors and Advising Offices, offers pragmatic advice for advisors on a range of topics including the specific practices of recognizing and addressing gender bias in letters of recommendation, setting up effective selection panels, establishing strategic plans that can drive an office forward, and understanding how graduate students search for opportunities and what that means for their advisors. Part III focuses on international awards—how to develop a general campus environment that supports international awards and how to establish a student culture willing to take the leap to explore another culture intellectually, academically, and personally. Part IV includes the biennial Survey of the Profession to allow directors and staff of individual advising offices to understand the landscape of advising work being conducted across the country.

      Karen Weber and Ben Rayder in the volume’s opening essay, Early Research as a Pathway for Nationally Competitive Awards, make the case for fellowships advising offices to become engaged in active learning programs like undergraduate research, study abroad, and service learning. The authors examine various high-impact practices—a phrase that is currently much discussed in higher education circles—including the actual act of supporting students as they apply for nationally competitive awards. They conclude that perhaps the most effective way to bond students with faculty is through research. To that end, the University of Houston’s Honors College created the Houston Early Research Experience (HERE) that serves all students on the campus, not just honors students. The program recruits and then prepares freshmen and sophomores for future research. Students participate in a two-week workshop in May to learn research fundamentals. The essay details the goals, the student benefits, and the successes of the program. It also makes a persuasive case that such programs can effectively inform students about and guide them to offices of merit awards, which can in turn assist students, who are already on their way in developing strong faculty connections and a research profile, in choosing and competing more successfully for award opportunities that best fit their long-term goals.

      Chapter 2 focuses on the Morris K. and Stewart L. Udall Scholarship. Authors Suzanne McCray, Jane Morris, and Paula Randler are all experienced Udall Scholarship reviewers, and Randler is a former Udall Scholar herself who also served as a program manager of the scholarship for several years. This essay provides reviewer perspectives on how applications are read, what leadership means within the Udall Scholarship context, and how the well-known Udall factor is applied. One of the most salient points is that leadership can be viewed very differently by different scholarship programs and that advisors should be careful to review the individual foundation values (like Udall’s civility, integrity, and consensus).

      Authors Richelle Bernazzoli, Joanna Dickert, Anne Moore, and Jason Kelly Roberts examine authentic student motivation and drive in chapter 3’s Excellent Sheep or Passionate Weirdos? Fellowships and Fellowships Advising as Vehicles for Self-Authorship. The article begins with an analysis of the perceived and actual purposes of higher education and relies heavily (and takes part of its name from) a controversial but interesting book by William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. Deresiewicz eschews the sheep and celebrates the weirdos. As chapter 3’s title promises, the authors of this article also look at how students fall into traps of what is expected rather than examining what it is they actually hope to learn, to accomplish, and to be. The article meshes theory with practice and ends with examples of two students who, after relevant experience and self-reflection, decide on a path that seems more appropriate to their goals. They may or may not be fully developed passionate weirdos, but they do seem to be headed in a direction that feels designed by and right for them.

      The last essay in this section (chapter 4) is from Tara Yglesias. Once again Yglesias does not disappoint in her article, You Sank My Fellowship: The ‘Near Miss’ Truman Application. Yglesias has written many articles on the Truman application process for various proceedings on topics ranging from what constitutes leadership to Truman reviewers, to how students should think about developing a postgraduate studies plan, to surviving the Truman interview. All are written with an inimitable flair. You Sank My Fellowship is a lively look at why students may not move forward to an interview from the written application review process. Readers of this essay should not be misled by the jaunty prose or the game framework (literally games like Scattergories, Apples to Apples, Connect Four, Chutes and Ladders) that Yglesias employs. Hers is a serious look at why dedicated, talented, and even amazing students are sometimes (indeed all too often) not included as Truman finalists, and it is an easy step to apply these assessments to a broader set of opportunities. Advisors who may have a comprehensive view of the talented students on their own campus are less likely to have that comprehensive view of the applicants that come from across the country. Here students and advisors are likely to take comfort. That there is simply a subjective aspect of choosing scholars that cannot be avoided is less appealing, but may benefit an advisor’s students on some occasions if not on

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1