Distributed October 30, 2001
For Immediate Release
News Service Contact: Kate Bramson



Advanced Studies Fellowship Program

Brown University seeks 10 scholars to study national education projects

A new postdoctoral studies program at Brown University will provide 10 scholars with nine-month research leaves to examine issues around the theme “The Nation and Its Schools: Federal and National Strategies for School Reform.”

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown University has recently secured funding for a $1-million project that will allow 10 scholars to participate in a nonresidential postdoctoral fellowship program. The Advanced Studies Fellowship Program at Brown will center on the theme, “The Nation and Its Schools: Federal and National Strategies for School Reform.”

Ten fellows will receive funding for nine-month research leaves during academic years 2002-03 or 2003-04 at locations of their choice, according to Carl Kaestle, University Professor and professor of education, history and public policy, who directs the program. The program will also bring the fellows to Brown for two seminars each year and will allow them to develop mentoring relationships with senior faculty at Brown during the three-year period from July 2002 to June 2005.

The program is funded by grants of $700,000 from the Spencer Foundation and $300,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

To be eligible for the program, applicants must have received their doctoral degrees in May 1994 or later. Applicants who will earn degrees in spring 2002 are also eligible. For logistical and financial reasons, the program cannot accept applications from scholars residing outside the United States.

The application deadline is Feb. 15, 2002, and the 10 scholars will be selected in early April. Additional information about the Advanced Studies Fellowship Program is available on the Internet at www.brown.edu/Departments/Education/Advanced_Studies_Fellowship.

Kaestle, whose current research is on the federal role in education since 1950, offered ideas on the types of research that fellows might seek to conduct through this program:

  • comparative analyses of how two states have handled an education issue in contrast to how the federal government has handled it;


  • examinations into how federal programs have been implemented in urban districts;


  • comparative studies of school-finance cases that end up in state supreme courts; and


  • studies of education movements such as the charter school movement that are national in scope but have not been led by the federal government.

Kaestle has directed National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars four times, and he has been adviser to 16 doctoral students, many of whose dissertations have appeared as books.

Other program faculty include Howard Chudacoff, University Professor and professor of history; John Modell, professor of education, human development and sociology; Marion Orr, associate professor of political science and urban studies; James Patterson, Ford Foundation Professor of History; Wendy J. Schiller, associate professor of political science and public policy; and Warren Simmons, director of Brown’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform and senior lecturer in education.

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