FORWARD Fellowships
Through the FORWARD Fellows program, the Office of the Dean provides resources for academic departments, research units, and school offices to collaborate with student Fellows to design and implement initiatives fighting oppression and white supremacy. The program focuses on the professional development of fellows around anti-racist organizational change, concepts and tools for advancing racial equity in organizations.
Fellows will receive $5,000 for the duration of the program (September – April) and will commit approximately 5 hours per week to related activities. The Fellowship is designed to help master’s students gain knowledge, skills, and perspectives that enable them to:
- Collaborate with a Columbia Mailman FORWARD Partner to develop an initiative, grounded in established theory, that addresses a racism-related problem of practice in the school community
- Align their proposed initiative to existing anti-racist work at the school, so that new efforts honor, complement, and extend the labor of those who have come before
- Propose methods to implement the proposed initiative and evaluate its impact
- Reflect on their own positionality to identify opportunities to increase equity and disrupt systemic racism
- Synthesize learning from the Fellows experience to transmit new knowledge and practice to others
The deadline for student applications has ended. Awardees will spend eight months working with their preceptors to design, develop and implement their project.
The department submission period for 2023 has ended. Departments with an awarded proposal will be paired with student Fellows for eighth-month terms in which they will design, develop, and implement their projects. If your department or office is interested in working with a FORWARD Fellow, please check back during the 2024 spring semester. To assist with your application, see a sample project proposal.