Application Deadline:15 September of the year preceding the fellowship

In an effort to encourage faculty scholarship and professional development, the College offers the Phillips Faculty Fellowships on a competitive basis. No application for external funding is required to apply for a Phillips Fellowship.

Funded by the endowment established by Charles Franklin Phillips, fourth president of Bates, and his wife, Evelyn M. Phillips, Phillips Fellowships award excellence among Bates' scholar-teachers. The fellowships are designed to provide an opportunity for faculty members to gain an academic year leave at their full base salary in order to pursue significant scholarship. Fellowships include support for the replacement of the faculty recipient and up to $4,000 on a reimbursement basis during the year of the fellowship for travel expenses to research venues. Two or three Phillips Fellowships are usually awarded each year. 

President and Mrs. Phillips were eager to provide opportunities for Bates faculty to interact with leading scholars in research venues beyond Bates; projects that take the scholar away from Bates are expected.

Criteria for awards:

• The quality of the scholarly project. Phillips proposals should be designed to accomplish significant scholarship. The criterion of "significance," in terms of new knowledge and contribution to a field, is of paramount importance. Consideration is given as to whether or not the applicant is able to accomplish the work without a Phillips award.
• The ways in which the fellowship will advance productivity in the years beyond the sabbatical year.
• The ways in which the scholarly work can or will contribute to courses or pedagogy.
• The plan for disseminating the results of the research among peers.
• A major expectation of the Phillips Endowment is that fellows "interact with leading scholars in their field." This generally means travel away from Bates for some part of the fellowship. Proposals should discuss such collaborations and/or provide a letter from a host institution or individual.
• Preference will be given to faculty who have not previously received a Phillips Fellowship.

Tenured faculty members and senior lecturers are eligible. Preference is given to proposals that link a Phillips Fellowship to a scheduled sabbatical leave, though proposals not linked to a planned sabbatical leave will be considered. Receipt of a Phillips Fellowship will reset the calculation of the grantee’s sabbatical calendar.

If the recipient of a Phillips Fellowship receives an external grant or fellowship for the same year, the Phillips Fellowship will be adjusted to conform with existing faculty guidelines governing extra compensation so that the recipient's total salary remuneration does not exceed the full salary plus 2/9th. (The maximum salary does not include the recipient's travel budget.)

Application process for the Phillips Fellowship:
Eight copies of the application must be submitted to the Dean of the Faculty. The application for the Phillips Fellowship consists of the following:

• An Application Form found here.
•  A brief abstract of the proposed research.
• A project description of two to five pages, describing
• • the plan for the leave
  • the research to be conducted
  • the research venues where the work will be done and/or the scholars with whom the faculty member will be interacting
  • the goals for the leave
  • the relevance of the work to the faculty member’s ongoing research or teaching
• A dissemination plan appropriate to your field of expertise. Dissemination suggests either eventual peer-reviewed publication or, for those fields in which work is not generally shared in a published form, a plan for presenting the work to an external audience of one's peers.
• Applications must be accompanied by the faculty applicant's department or program chair's plan of leaves and request for course replacements, so that the request can be evaluated with an understanding of the needs of the department or program. Replacement courses will be provided on the basis of department and program needs, not on the basis of the quality of the proposed sabbatical project.
• A budget outlining travel expenses associated with the fellowship.

By applying, the faculty member agrees to submit a progress report at the end of the sabbatical. This report should both summarize work completed to date and describe the future agency and manuscripts, publications, performances, or exhibitions that resulted from the sabbatical or are expected to result.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. May I apply for a grant and then not use it?
Generally, no. Turning down a grant award can reflect negatively on the applicant. There may be special circumstances where an award must be turned down or delayed, but ordinarily this should not occur.

2. Do I need to disseminate my work within my sabbatical year?
No.  It is recognized that different scholarly fields have different paces within which new work is ready for dissemination. The expectation is that suitable dissemination relevant to an individual's field of work will result before the next sabbatical. When applying for the next enhanced sabbatical, the c.v. submitted with the application must indicate which published work resulted from the previous enhanced sabbatical.

8/2009