Graduate School

Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellowship

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Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellowship

The Brown/Wheaton Faculty Fellows Program, a collaborative program between Brown University and Wheaton College, annually offers outstanding advanced graduate students the opportunity to experience faculty life firsthand at a liberal arts college.

People in front of a paintingBy teaching a one-semester course at Wheaton and participating in the intellectual life of the college, Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellows gain a better understanding of the responsibilities and challenges of academic life at a four-year, liberal arts college, which can be markedly different than those at a research institution such as Brown.

Wheaton College

Wheaton College is a selective, coeducational liberal arts college of 120 full-time faculty and 1,550 students. Located in nearby Norton, Massachusetts, Wheaton was founded in 1834 as a women's institution and became coeducational in 1987. As with most liberal arts colleges, Wheaton 's educational philosophy is predicated on a close, collaborative relationship between students and faculty. A low student-faculty ratio and small class size (between fifteen and twenty) means students know their professors as scholar-teachers, advisors, mentors, and supervisors of research projects. Wheaton offers a curriculum leading to a degree in Bachelor of Arts in more than forty-four majors and sixty minors. Students choose from over 1,525 courses in subjects from physics to philosophy, political science to computer science, art history to theater, English to economics.

Wheaton Curriculum

The Wheaton curriculum demonstrates the college's commitment to the traditional breadth and depth of the liberal arts and sciences while promoting connections across established academic divisions. Its new curriculum transformation initiative, the Infusion Project, integrates critical studies on race/ethnicity and its intersections with gender, sexuality, class, religion and technology in the US and globally in all disciplines.

Qualifications

Brown doctoral students who have completed their coursework, advanced to candidacy (are at the dissertation-writing stage), have at least two semesters of teaching experience, and are currently in their third, fourth or fifth year of studies are eligible to apply for the Brown/Wheaton Faculty Fellows Program.

Successful candidates will have a strong commitment to teaching, as demonstrated by their participation in departmental teaching seminars and/or in the Sheridan Center's teaching certificate programs. The ideal applicants will have completed the Sheridan Center's Certificate I program.

To Apply

All applicants, be they rising fourth-, fifth- or sixth-year students, must submit a cover letter and CV to Senior Associate Dean Vanessa Ryan at Graduate_Dean@brown.edu. (Submit these two documents via email as one pdf file.) Applicants’ cover letters should describe their credentials and teaching experience and their research agendas and intellectual interests. The letter, which should not exceed two pages, should include a description of the applicant’s teaching competencies broadly defined as well as a one-paragraph description of a course the applicant proposes to teach at Wheaton. Applicants may propose courses that meet curricular needs identified by Wheaton College departments/programs. 

Applicants should also request a statement from their DGS that indicates that they are in good standing and the DGS supports the opportunity. This brief statement (not a full letter of recommendation) can be sent from the DGS to Graduate_Dean@brown.edu.

Deadline: February 14, 2025

Selection Process

The Graduate School reviews candidates and forwards the applications with general recommendations to Wheaton. Based on its curricular needs, Wheaton then asks a select group of candidates to interview. Once selected, each Faculty Fellow is assigned a Wheaton mentor and begins the process of refining his or her syllabus to ensure that it promotes student learning in a liberal arts environment.

Expectations

It is an honor to serve as a Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellow. Each Faculty Fellow teaches one course and participates fully in the intellectual life of the college community. Faculty Fellows attend department and faculty meetings (as non-voting participants), take part in relevant monthly teaching and learning workshops, and share their ongoing research with Wheaton colleagues through presentations at the Faculty Luncheon Series.

Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellows are assigned a faculty mentor from their home department at Wheaton. Upon selection and before the semester starts, Faculty Fellows meet with their mentors to review the syllabus and assignments and to establish a schedule for regular meetings throughout the term. The mentors serve as sounding boards about the progress of the Fellows' courses, observe their classes and make recommendations, and help acculturate them to the four-year college environment.

To assess their teaching, Faculty Fellows use Wheaton's standard course evaluation form at the end of the semester and are observed and given feedback by the department chair or colleague. At the end of each term, Faculty Fellows meet individually with their Wheaton mentors or department chairs to assess their development and performance. All Fellows are required to submit a summary report about their experience in the program to the Graduate School and Sheridan Center at Brown and to Wheaton College.

Contacts

  • Josh Stenger, Associate Provost of Academic Administration and Faculty Affairs, Wheaton College
  • Vanessa Ryan, Senior Associate Dean of Student Development, Brown University Graduate School
  • Byrd McDaniel, Assistant Director of Student Development