Freedman Student Fellows Program Applications Now Open

Student in library

The Walter Freedman and Karen Harrison Freedman Student Fellowships provide funding for undergraduate and graduate students to complete targeted, digital projects under the guidance of Kelvin Smith Library's Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship team. The student fellowships are offered as a parallel to the very successful Freedman Faculty Fellows program. 

Applications for the Freedman Student Fellowships are due on September 21, 2020. Eligibility is limited to students in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead School of Management and the School of Engineering.

All recipients will:

  • receive project- and technology-specific training from experts at the Freedman Center.

  • have an assigned Freedman Center team member to help guide their work and monitor their progress.

  • present a summary of their work at the annual symposium and prepare a poster about their work for inclusion in the CWRU Research Showcase.

  • have their work permanently housed in one of the institution’s storage and preservation platforms (e.g.,  Digital Case, Scalar, ArcGIS Online, or the Open Science Framework).

For the 2020-21 academic year, the Freedman Student Fellowship program provides undergraduate and graduate students the ability to partake in one of two opportunities: 

1) Internship track

The recipient of 2020-21 Freedman Student Internship will work with the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship and the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women to advance digital components of the Silent Witness project for Cuyahoga County. Silent Witness is a national initiative dedicated to the elimination of domestic violence by raising awareness through community based exhibits honoring those who have been murdered by their partners. This year’s intern will learn how to use the Freedman Center’s geographic information systems (GIS) and digital exhibit platforms, like Scalar and StoryMaps, and will apply these technologies with the Mather Center to complement their Silent Witness physical exhibits. 

Students in the internship track will be paid $15 per hour and will work 5 to 8 hours per week during the academic year. 

Apply to the internship track fellowship.

2) Grant track

The grant track provides specific funding for students to employ digital scholarship methods in pursuit of their own research. It is intended to support significant and impactful projects, which may include research undertaken as part of undergraduate capstones, and graduate theses or dissertations. Examples of acceptable digital projects for the grant track might include: 

  • The creation of a digital edition of a literary work with TEI

  • The digitization, transcription, and study of audio/video materials

  • The use of GIS to assess spatial changes or demographics

  • The construction of a database of texts, images, or audio recordings for analysis and visualization

Requests for funding should not exceed $2000. 

Apply to the grant track fellowship.

Internship and grant applicants are strongly encouraged to schedule a consultation with members of the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship team before submitting an application. To schedule a consultation, contact freedmancenter@case.edu.

Any general questions regarding the Freedman Center’s various funding opportunities should be emailed to Charlie Harper, crh92@case.edu.