Each year MBB awards several Mary Gordon Roberts Fellowships to undergraduates to support research that will contribute to their senior honors theses. Applicants must be juniors or first-semester seniors in an MBB track, or in the MBB secondary field if they are doing MBB-related theses.

Mary Gordon Roberts Fellowships are intended to support living expenses (stipend) and sometimes research expenses. Stipends are normally for full-time, ten-week work on your thesis project.

If you have already received an award that covers all expenses and precludes further funding (for example, PRISE), or if you anticipate no living or other expenses for your project (for example, if your home residence is local), you may apply for a non-stipendiary award. A non-stipendiary Mary Gordon Roberts Fellowship recognizes a high-quality thesis project and can thus be usefully noted in one's resume/CV and on professional/graduate school and employment applications.

Because MBB funds are limited, we expect students planning summer thesis research to pursue other funding possibilities as well, including support from the Harvard College Research Program (HCRP) and your thesis advisor or her/his laboratory/research program. MBB usually cannot fully fund students but works with other funding sources like HCRP to make co-awards that will.

You will use CARAT (the Common Application for Research and Travel) to apply to both the Mary Gordon Roberts Fellowship and the HCRP award. Log onto CARAT at https://carat.fas.harvard.edu.for forms and instructions. For the MBB award, complete the CARAT form and upload a project proposal, unofficial transcript, and resume. In the budget section, either note “stipend” or “non-stipendiary” in total expenses and be sure to leave the rest blank, unless you are requesting research support, in which case you should itemize those. Your thesis/research supervisor should also upload a letter of recommendation by the deadline.

Summer 2024 applications for the Mary Gordon Roberts Fellowship are due at noon on Monday, March 25th.

If you have any questions about submitting your material, feel free to email them to Shawn Harriman. He'll be happy to answer them for you.