Summer Grant Fellowship Guidelines 2015

If you have received our award e-mail, congratulations on receiving a Mary Gordon Roberts fellowship for the summer of 2015!  We hope this fellowship will help you undertake a gratifying research experience and a successful thesis project. This page will provide you with details of your responsibilities as a Mary Gordon Roberts Fellow.

We have made our awards in concert with several other granting groups at Harvard, so that our partial funding can combine with other partial funding to give you a viable budget. If you have received funding from groups other than the following, please let us know, as we may adjust your award to conserve funds for other awards.
Harvard College Research Program (HCRP)
Program for Research in Science and Engineering (PRISE)
Herchel Smith Undergraduate Research Program for Scientists

We are providing you with this funding to do the research you described in your fellowship application. If you do not undertake this research this summer, you will need to reimburse us the amount of your grant. You should also consult with us if you change the topic of your research in a major way, as a new topic may not be eligible for our funding. That said, it is natural in research for a topic, study parameters, and details of methodology to evolve beyond that described in an initial prospectus, and such changes will not oblige you to return this fellowship (or consult with us).

If you do not use all the funds you requested for the summer (for example, you found cheaper housing than expected or you did not run all the study participants you planned for), you should return the unspent funds to us at the end of the summer.

During the summer, we will check in with your thesis advisor about your progress, and at the end of the summer, you should submit a report on your research to us. This report should be about one page in length, and should discuss what portion of your thesis work you completed, your findings if available, what you learned, the challenges and high points of your summer research, and how your research will shape your thesis. You may address this report to the Members of the Standing Committee on Mind, Brain, and Behavior, c/o Shawn Harriman, and may send it via e-mail to shawn_harriman@harvard.edu. This report should be submitted by Tuesday, September 1st (the day before classes begin).

As a Mary Gordon Roberts Fellow, you may be asked to present your research earlier in the schedule of the MBB senior thesis workshops. This is not always the case, though, and we will provide basic information about the workshops next year.

Before you begin your thesis research, we expect that you will receive appropriate animal training or human subjects approval as appropriate, and while you conduct your research, we expect that you will adhere to the professional standards for research in your discipline.

To accept these terms and your fellowship, please complete the Fellowship Acceptance Form (linked below) and return it to Shawn Harriman (shawn_harriman@harvard.edu or 841 William James Hall) by noon on Tuesday, May 19th.

We are so pleased to have you as a summer Fellow and we look forward to hearing how your research unfolds!