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Funding and Jobs / Opportunities — Comments Off on Funding: Vera Institute Research Fellowships
24
Feb 16

Funding: Vera Institute Research Fellowships

The Early Research Initiative at the Graduate Center, CUNY

invites applications for two

CUNY Graduate Center – Vera Institute Research Fellowships

Fellowship amounts: $4,000

Deadline for applications: March 29, 2016

 

The information below was provided by the Provost’s Office:

The Early Research Initiative invites applications for two Vera Institute Research Fellowships.  These $4,000 fellowships will be offered to Graduate Center Ph.D. students from any program with primary research interests in criminal or immigration justice and the work of the Vera Institute. The primary responsibilities of the award winners will be to collaborate with researchers in one of Vera’s 5 centers or programs on research relating to a specific project, including but not limited to data collection, analysis, fieldwork, report writing, stakeholder engagement, and dissemination.

While Vera’s centers, programs, and demonstration projects span the criminal justice system, it is offering CUNY Fellows projects in select areas. Please see the attached list of potential projects below, and indicate in your application which project or projects are most relevant to your experience and interest.

Fellowship recipients will be required to be in residence for 120 hours over the summer of 2016 at the Vera Institute working for scheduled times from 9:30 to 4pm on Monday through Friday. In addition, recipients will be required to do a brief public presentation on their work and write a blog post about their experiences before the end of the Fall 2016 semester.

To apply please send a letter of interest describing your research interests and related experience with specific reference to one of the projects described below, a c.v., a current Graduate Center transcript (Students may submit the unofficial student copy that can be printed from banner), and a letter of support from your primary advisor.

Instructions for submitting your application:

1)     Please combine the above materials (except for the letter of recommendation) into a SINGLE file (saved as either as a pdf document or a word document).

Use the following format when naming your document: Last Name, First Name, Program

2)     Email your file directly to fellowshipapps@gc.cuny.edu

Please use your Graduate Center email address when sending the file.

Instructions for Faculty Recommenders

1) Prepare your reference letter as a regular word or pdf document.

2) Please use the following format when naming your document: Student Last Name, First Name

3) Email your file directly to fellowshipapps@gc.cuny.edu

 Application Deadline: March 29th, 2016

CUNY Graduate Center / Vera Institute of Justice PhD Student Fellowships

Available projects, Summer 2016

Aging and Infirm Prisoners in New York

Center on Sentencing and Corrections and Substance Use and Mental Health Program 

The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) currently holds approximately 53,000 incarcerated individuals. Within this population, 17% are over the age of 50, and many have severe mobility impairments and/or have been diagnosed with one or more serious illness. Medical parole is one option for releasing the most medically costly prisoners. This project, in partnership with DOCCS, will assess practices and policies for medical parole and identify opportunities for improvement, develop community based placement opportunities, and enhance DOCCS capacity to use medical parole and provide implementation assistance. In addition, Vera will track released individuals’ quality of live post-release.

Incarceration Trends

Center on Sentencing and Corrections

The Incarceration Trends Project (ITP) seeks to advance research on the prevalence and impact of incarceration at the local-level. Vera’s ITP dataset merges 45 years of county-level inmate population data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Census of Jails and Annual Survey of Jails and resident population demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Currently, the dataset includes jail data for every one of the approximately 3,000 counties in the country and combined jail and prison data for all counties in New York and California. In 2016, Vera will incorporate data for the number of people in, and admissions to, prison by commitment county for all 50 states. For more information, see the ITP data tool at trends.vera.org and complete details on the ITP dataset in Incarceration Trends: Data and Methods for Historical Jail Populations in U.S. Counties, 1970-2014 (Kang-Brown, 2015). Vera is seeking opportunities to use this tool to answer important questions about the use of incarceration, and the Summer Fellow will have the chance to take part in discussions and help shape the future direction of the project and analyses.

New York Immigrant Family Unity Project

Center on Immigration and Justice

The Vera-administered New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) is the first public defender program in the country for immigrants facing deportation. NYIFUP provides detained indigent immigrants facing deportation at New York’s Varick Street Immigration Court with free, high-quality legal representation. The project, which seeks to keep immigrants with their families and in their communities, will also serve detained New York City residents whose deportation cases are being heard in nearby New Jersey locations.

The project seeks to increase court effectiveness and decrease detention times for those it represents, thereby saving taxpayer dollars, while maximizing due process. By keeping families together, the project lowers the social and economic costs that would otherwise be incurred by the City and State of New York and New York employers. NYIFUP provides a replicable model for other jurisdictions around the country. NYIFUP is a collaborative of Vera, the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, The Center for Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York, and the Immigration Justice Clinic of Cardozo Law School.

Quantitative skills are important for this work, but this project also provides an opportunity to gain qualitative research experience, particularly data cleaning and analysis for the report to the City Council. There will be a rich, primary data set of over 1200 cases currently being compiled by three legal service providers in New York that will be available for analysis starting in June or July 2016.  There also may be an opportunity to help conduct qualitative interviews with clients of the program. Some knowledge of immigration law and Spanish language ability preferred.

Justice AmeriCorps

Center on Immigration and Justice

The number of children crossing the border without a parent or legal guardian has increased ten-fold in recent years, starting from an annual average of 6,000-7,000 children.  The purpose of the justice AmeriCorps Program is to use the AmeriCorps service model to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of immigration court proceedings involving unaccompanied children. Immigration judges are able to conduct hearings more effectively when unaccompanied children are assisted by competent legal representatives. Vera’s Center on Immigration and Justice is conducting this study to provide performance measurement and evaluation services that will contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of the jAC Legal Services for Unaccompanied Children Program. The Summer Fellow will be able to learn about the project and take part in the evaluation.

Funding and Jobs / Opportunities — Comments Off on Funding: Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Research Fellowship
29
Jan 16

Funding: Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Research Fellowship

Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Research Fellowship

Deadline for Applications: Monday, February, 29, 2016, 2:00 pm

The Provost’s Office is offering multiple $4,000 summer fellowships for doctoral students with Level II status as well as Level III students who have not submitted a prospectus to their program. The fellowships are available to students in the humanities and social sciences.

Please read the following information from the Provost’s Office about the fellowships and application process. Cover letter forms for the application were emailed to students at their @gradcenter.cuny.edu addresses.

 

This fellowship program has two objectives:

·       To allow students to conduct pre-dissertation research and training following completion of the first exam.

·       To support the development of a dissertation research proposal suitable for submission to an external funding agency.

This program seeks to facilitate the transition from coursework to advanced individualized research.  Early research awards allow students to strengthen their proposals by:

·       Refining their research topic into a well-defined research problem;

·       Determining appropriate research design, methods, research locale(s), and language(s);

·       Assessing project feasibility and determining necessary affiliations and approvals.

The successful applicant will address how their proposed summer research will lead to an improved proposal with regard to the above categories. Recipients will undertake such activities as (but not limited to): initial field work, preliminary data collection, travel related to research (i.e. preliminary visits to archives, special collections, museums, and/or historic sites), supplementary training in methods or techniques, or specialized language instruction.  This program does not support conference attendance.

Eligibility

·       Students must be level II, exceptions will be made for students in programs where a formal dissertation prospectus/proposal is not submitted for approval until after advancing to level III. Such level III students will only be eligible if they have not officially submitted a prospectus/proposal to their program.

·       Applicants must conduct at least four weeks of summer research away from their home institutions.

N.B.. Students who have already received a Dissertation Fellowship from the Provost’s Office are ineligible to receive these awards. 

 

Each application must include the following:  

1)     Cover Sheet [emailed to students at their @gradcenter.cuny.edu addresses].

2)     Research Proposal that includes the following sections:

a.      Describe what you currently expect will be the topic, research question(s), supportive literature, methods of investigation, approach to data analysis, and theoretical contribution of your proposed dissertation project (up to 1,200 words).

b.     List up to 20 research publications that have most significantly informed the formulation of your research topic, questions, theories, and methods.

c.      What are your plans for summer research? (up to 500 words) Please include: a justification for your choice or research site(s) and/or sources of data and information; a brief description of your anticipated approaches to investigation; a timeline; and any local professional contacts you might have made.

d.     Describe how you think this summer research will assist you in developing your dissertation proposal and preparing for long term dissertation research. (up to 250 words)

Note: if you have previously conducted exploratory research at any of your proposed research site(s) or on a related topic, please explain how the additional research proposed will enable you to build upon your past experience.

3)     Two-page curriculum vitae.

4)     Current Graduate Center transcript.  (Students may submit the unofficial student copy that can be printed from banner.)

5)     One letter of reference to be submitted electronically by your adviser or faculty mentor (see instructions below).

Recipients of these fellowships must agree to the following conditions as part of their acceptance of the award:

1)     Attend a one-hour proposal writing workshop in May 2016.

2)     Write a one-page summary of their summer research work (due by 21 August 2016).

3)     Provide a 7-10 minute public presentation of their work at a doctoral student research conference to be held at the Graduate Center in September 2016.

4)     Attend a grant writing workshop at the Graduate Center in the 2016-2017 academic year designed to assist you in applying for future grants and fellowships (multiple sessions of the workshop will be held in order to accommodate potential scheduling conflicts).

5)     Agree to have some version of their summer work potentially featured on a Student Research Collaborative webpage currently under construction by the Early Research Initiative Research Collaborative.

Instructions for submitting your application:

1)     Combine your cover sheet, research proposal, curriculum vitae, and transcript into a SINGLE file (either as a pdf document or a word document).

  • Use the following format when naming your document: Last Name, First Name, Program

2)     Email the file as an email attachment to fellowshipapps[at] gc [dot] cuny [dot] edu

Instructions for Faculty Recommenders

1)     Prepare your reference letter as a regular word or pdf document.

  • Please use the following format when naming your document: Student Last Name, First Name

2)     Email the file as an email attachment to fellowshipapps [at] gc [dot] cuny [dot] edu

 

 If you have questions, please contact Rachel Sponzo at rsponzo [at] gc [dot] cuny [dot] edu, or 212-817-7282.

Funding and Jobs / Opportunities — Comments Off on Funding: Early Research Initiative’s Archival Research Grants
27
Jan 16

Funding: Early Research Initiative’s Archival Research Grants

The Early Research Initiative (ERI) is offering multiple Archival Research Grants of $4,000 to support the research and travel of Level II and Level III students working on their prospectuses or dissertations.

Deadline for Applications: Monday, February 22, 2016, 3pm

Please review the following information about the fellowships and the application process from the Office of the Provost:

The Early Research Initiative Knickerbocker Award for Archival Research in American Studies is designed to support doctoral students whose projects necessitate work in archives, repositories, and special collections (public and private) during the summer of 2016. Particular attention will be given to research projects that are interdisciplinary in nature. Students need not be members of the American Studies Certificate Program in order to apply, but their research must intersect with American Studies (broadly construed) in some discernible way.

The Early Research Initiative Award for Archival Research in African American and African Diaspora Studies will support doctoral students for work in archives, repositories, and special collections (public and private) during the summer of 2016 that focuses directly on the history, society, and culture of Africans and persons of African descent.  Particular attention will be given to research projects that are interdisciplinary in nature.  In addition to the general requirements for Early Research Initiative Awards for Archival Research, successful candidates for the African American and African Diaspora Studies Award will be required to organize and participate in a roundtable discussion of “African Diaspora Studies and the Archive.”  This event will be take place under the sponsorship of the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC).

Multiple awards of $4,000.00 will be made in each of the following categories:

A)     Level III students: to support research aimed at the completion of a chapter or substantive portion of the dissertation.

B)      Level II students: whose research agenda could be substantially improved by access to archival materials prior to the submission of their dissertation prospectus.

N.B.. Students who received research awards from the Provost’s Office in the past still are eligible to apply again this year (with the stipulation that their applications should be more specifically focused than those of first time applicants).

Each application must include the following:  

1)     Cover Sheet (attached)

2)     A brief and specific description of your research agenda with explicit reference to what institutional repositories you intend to visit (no more than 500 words)

3)     Two-page curriculum vitae

4)     Current Graduate Center transcript.  (Students may submit the unofficial student copy that can be printed from banner.)

5)     A writing sample (10-15 pages).

6)     One letter of reference to be submitted electronically by your adviser (see instructions below).

Recipients of these fellowships must agree to the following conditions as part of their acceptance of the award:

1)     Attend a 90 minute Archival Research Orientation Workshop (tentatively scheduled for mid-May 2016)

2)     Write a one page summary of your archival work (due by 21 August 2016).

3)     Provide a 7-10 minute public presentation of their work at a doctoral student research conference to be held at the Graduate Center in mid to late September 2016.

4)     Attend a grant writing workshop at the Graduate Center next academic year designed to assist you in applying for future grants and fellowships (multiple sessions of the workshop will be held in order to accommodate potential scheduling conflicts).

5)     Agree to potentially have some version of their summer work featured on a Student Research Collaborative webpage currently under construction by the Early Research Initiative.

 

Instructions for submitting your application:

1)     Combine your cover sheet, research description, curriculum vitae, transcript, and writing sample into a SINGLE file (either as a pdf document or a word document).

  • Use the following format when naming your document: Last Name, First Name, Program

2)     Email your file directly to fellowshipapps@gc.cuny.edu.

  • Please use your graduate center email address when sending the file.

Instructions for Faculty Recommenders

1)     Prepare your reference letter as a regular word or pdf document.

  • Please use the following format when naming your document: Student Last Name, First Name

2)     Email your file directly to fellowshipapps@gc.cuny.edu.

If you have questions, please contact Rachel Sponzo at rsponzo@gc.cuny.edu, or 212-817-7282.

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