About the Program
The Foundation awards Junior Fellowships to college seniors and college graduates without teaching experience and Senior Fellowships to experienced school teachers. The only difference in the two kinds of fellowships is that Junior Fellows are expected to attend graduate school full-time for a maximum of two years and Senior Fellows may elect to attend graduate school part-time for up to a maximum of five years. The monetary amount of the two fellowship awards are the same.
Award and Stipend
Each year at least one Madison Fellowship is awarded to an applicant in each of the fifty states. The fellowships pay for the cost of obtaining one of the following graduate degrees:
- A master's degree in history or political science;
- A degree of Master of Arts in Teaching in history or social studies; or
- A related master's degree in education that permits a concentration in history, government, social studies, or political science.
The fellowships are intended to enable students to undertake graduate study of the roots, principles, framing, and development of the United States Constitution. Therefore, each fellowship recipient must take at least twelve semester hours or their equivalent in topics related to the framing and history of the Constitution of the United States.
Eligibility
To be eligible to apply, nominees must be U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals, must qualify to study towards one of the master's degrees indicated above, and must agree to teach in a secondary school for no less than one year for each full academic year of study under a fellowship.
All Fellows will be required to attend, at the Foundation's expense, a four-week, graduate-level institute on the founding of American constitutional government at a university in the Washington, D.C. area.
Application Procedure
Applications for the Madison fellowship may be downloaded from the Internet in the fall semester. The deadline for applications to be received for the national competition is March .
The application asks for background information about the nominee as well as personal information about why the nominee wishes to be a secondary school social studies teacher. It also requires that applicants present a detailed plan of study for their graduate degrees and requires that applicants write a 600 word essay describing why the study of the Constitution is important and why it should form a basic part of secondary school education.
The application also includes three letters of recommendation and official transcripts from all colleges and universities the nominee has attended.
Unlike several other prestigious scholarships, University of Puget Sound is not limited in the number of Madison Fellowship applicants that we can have; however, applicants must still have the university's endorsement before they can send their applications forward for the national competition.
Students cannot obtain that endorsement unless they work closely with the Fellowships Office. University of Puget Sound's Madison Fellowship nominees are expected to work diligently on their applications over the course of the fall and the early part of the spring semesters. Several drafts of their applications and their essays will be required of them.