The University of Arizona

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VIGRE Fellowship Application

Note: Both Mathematics and Applied Mathematics students should submit their applications to the Mathematics Graduate Office (room 206) in paper form and if possible also electronically. The e-mail address is gradoffice@math.arizona.edu

Process

Near the middle of each semester a call will be made for preliminary applications, which should include parts I, II and III, as described below. The VIGRE fellowship committee will provide you with feedback to help you prepare the final version, which will be due a few days later. Funding decisions will be made based on the final proposal, which should include all four parts described below.

Eligibility

To be eligible for VIGRE support a continuing graduate student must

Period of support

You may apply for support for up to three consecutive periods out of Fall, Spring, Summer. Summer support requests may be for one or two months.

Applications for a full academic year of VIGRE support are likely to be funded only if the applicant is at an advanced stage in the PhD program and has an extremely well-articulated research plan.

Conditions

During the period of VIGRE support

Application Proposal

Your proposal must include the following items:

Part I — Factual information

Fill out the following factual information form. This is a TeX file. When you are finished filling in your answers you should tex this file, proof read it carefully and make sure it is neatly formatted. Then convert the output to a pdf file.

Note: The PDF form with fillable fields used in past years has been replaced with this TeX file.

Part II — Proposed academic and professional development activities

Write a narrative description of your proposed plan of study and research during the period of VIGRE support and any professional development or outreach activities you propose to undertake. The research component can include a list of courses and independent studies you will take. However, it should go well beyond such a list and explain how your planned activities will bring you closer to the completion of your PhD. In particular, your proposal should identify a research group or seminar in which you will participate and explain what your contribution might be. The research proposal has to have enough detail to convince reviewers that you know what you are talking about and can carry out the plan, but not be so technical as to be incomprehensible to non-expert reviewers. This is a fine line and you should seek advice on how to write this section from faculty members or senior graduate students.

The professional development component can include activities such as assisting a faculty member with an undergraduate research project, high school visits or weekend workshops, organizing a graduate student seminar, mentoring junior graduate students for the qualifying exams, or helping with a research tutorial group. When you mention an activity in the professional development plan, make sure to contact any faculty members involved in the activity and get their feedback. What will you do? What will your responsibilities be? How will you organize this activity (regular meeting, student supervision, x visits in high schools, and so on)? Try to be specific. If you need ideas for activities, talk to your program head.

Part II is one of the more important parts of the application since it will be used to judge how seriously you have thought about what you should be doing next and how likely you are to succeed in your PhD program. At the end of the each semester you will need to make a progress report. Now is the time to think about what might be in that report---what will you have accompilished? Make a plan for mathematical and professional growth (a “road map”) with some specific goals. We will want to compare your plan with your accomplishments at the end of the funding period. NSF will want us to do the same with the VIGRE project as a whole and your reports will be a key ingredient.

Part III — Statement of intellectual merit and broader impact

The NSF assesses proposals according to two fundamental criteria: “intellectual merit” and “broader impact”. These criteria are given below.

What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity?
How important is the proposed activity to advancing knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields? How well qualified is the proposer (individual or team) to conduct the project? (If appropriate, the reviewer will comment on the quality of prior work.) To what extent does the proposed activity suggest and explore creative and original concepts? How well conceived and organized is the proposed activity? Is there sufficient access to resources?

What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity?
How well does the activity advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training, and learning? How well does the proposed activity broaden the participation of underrepresented groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity, disability, geographic, etc.)? To what extent will it enhance the infrastructure for research and education, such as facilities, instrumentation, networks, and partnerships? Will the results be disseminated broadly to enhance scientific and technological understanding? What may be the benefits of the proposed activity to society?

In keeping with these criteria, your proposal should give a brief statement (one paragraph each) pertaining to both of these criteria. For advice on writing this part of the application see Advice on writing intellectual merit and broader impact.

Part IV — Letter of recommendation

This part is required only for the final application. Ask a faculty member to write a letter of recommendation for you. If you have a dissertation advisor, the letter should come from your advisor. Please provide a copy of parts I and II of your application to the person asked to write the letter.

If you have had previous VIGRE support the letter writer should be asked to comment on the progress you have made during and since that previous support.

Reports

All VIGRE graduate student fellows must submit a report of their activities at the end of each semester or summer of support. Reports are due in the Mathematics Graduate Office (room 206) within 30 days of the end of the period of support. Failure to submit reports will render the student ineligible for any further VIGRE support.

Reports should contain the following elements:

Part I — Factual information

Fill out the factual information form in PDF format.

Note: The PDF form has fillable fields. The free Acrobat Reader will allow you to save the form, re-open it, and re-edit it. (In some versions of Reader you must use “Save As...” instead of “Save” because the latter remains disabled.)

Part II — Report on academic and professional development activities

Write a narrative report on your academic and professional development activities during the period of VIGRE support. This should include a brief description of your progress on dissertation research or, if you have not yet begun dissertation research, a description of your progress toward finding a dissertation advisor and topic and beginning research. You should also discuss any professional development or outreach activities you have undertaken and how they contribute to your career plans.