“Doing what you love means knowing yourself well enough to be able to answer the question, ‘What would you love to do?’ and loving yourself enough to ask it.”
—Pamela Daniels, in Working It Out, 1977
Pamela Daniels ’59 was a Class Dean at Wellesley from 1981 to 2000. When she retired in May of 2000, her former students, classmates, family and friends endowed the Pamela Daniels ’59 Fellowship, to be offered annually in the fall to support an original senior project.
The Office of the Provost and Dean of the College invites applications for the 2024-2025 Pamela Daniels Fellowship. The Daniels Fellowship is a merit award intended to encourage the maverick spirit at Wellesley and to foster the ideal of self-discovery in the context of doing the work of a liberal arts degree. It is meant to provide an opportunity for a senior to envision and carry out a piece of work that she would love to do before she graduates – a work of imagination as well as intellect, a worthy and vivid dream project that explores who she is as well as what she knows.
The fellowship project may be creative or analytic. It must be related to a credit-bearing Wellesley course, which may or may not be an honors-thesis course and which may or may not be in the student’s major field. It may be an exploration of a familiar topic from a new perspective, or it may venture into an entirely new realm. Whether the project entails research in a remote archive, travel into a new landscape, production of a work of art or recording the life history of a social activist, the creators of the fellowship hope that the experience will affirm the student’s identity as an intellectual or artistic risk-taker.
Up to six fellowships, in the amount of $4000 each, will be awarded for the academic year 2024-2025. Seniors in good academic standing are eligible to apply.
Seniors applying for the Daniels Fellowship must submit the following materials:
- a COVER SHEET listing name, major(s), local address and telephone number, e-mail address, title and brief description of the project, the Wellesley course in which the work of the project will be done, and the name of the project advisor. The cover sheet should be signed and dated by both the student and her advisor
- a 2-3 page proposal that a.) describes the fellowship project and work plan and b.) discusses the personal as well as intellectual significance of the project in the context of the applicant’s education as a whole. The proposal must directly address the ideals of the fellowship.
- a budget explaining how the fellowship award will be used, e.g., to cover travel and living expenses related to fieldwork, interviews, research or production; to reduce paid work obligations during the academic year or winter session, thereby freeing time for the project; to purchase material, supplies and/or equipment necessary to carry out the project;
- a current resume;
- an official transcript or grade report from the registrar;
- two letters of recommendation from Wellesley faculty, one of which must be written by the student’s project advisor. The letters should address a.) the originality, strength, and feasibility of the student’s proposed project; b.) the student’s ability to work independently; and c.) the ways in which the student and her proposed project express and fulfill the ideals of the fellowship. These letters should be sent directly to Courtney Coile, Provost and Dean of the College, Green Hall 345 or by email at provost@wellesley.edu.
Completed fellowship applications should be sent to the Pamela Daniels Fellowship Selection Committee, c/o Courtney Coile, Office of the Provost and Dean of the College, Green Hall 345, or by email at provost@wellesley.edu by noon, Monday, October 7, 2024. Finalists will be interviewed by the Selection Committee on Monday, October 28.
(Please note: A recipient of the Daniels Fellowship is not eligible to also receive a Schiff or a Levitt Fellowship.)
Each Pamela Daniels Fellowship recipient will be required 1.) to give a public presentation of their work to the community at the spring 2025 Ruhlman Conference, and 2.) to submit a short written report reflecting on their fellowship experience to the Office of the Provost and Dean of the College before the last day of exams, 2025.