Honors Fellowships

William & Mary Honors Fellowships support students conducting research for department Honors projects. Students may receive up to $5,000 through the William & Mary Honors Fellowship program.This funding package includes a $4,000 summer grant to enable the student to conduct 10 full-time weeks of pre-Honors research, up to $1,000 for the faculty advisor's department or program to disburse in support of the honors project research, and up to $1,000 to support the faculty advisor's research.

The Honors Fellowship Website

The Honors Fellowship Give Campus website (active exclusively for Honors Fellowships during March through early April) allows multiple donors to fund student projects that interest them. For that reason, we want to give donors a real feel for your project and why you are passionate about it. The site will feature videos and images that will give donors this personalized appreciation for the students behind the research projects. 

Follow the Honors Fellowship blogs! 

Eligibility

All students who have been approved to conduct Department Honors in the 2020-2021 academic year are eligible to apply for W&M Honors Fellowships. Please see the Guidelines and Planning page for Arts & Sciences eligibility rules and check with your Honors advisor, department chair or program director applicable rules. 

Application Materials

Honors Fellowship Application Form
Use your email.wm.edu to create an account on the Embark application platform. Select "Charles Center Honors Fellowship Summer Research Grant" from the drop down menu. All applications successfully submitted will also be reviewed by faculty committees for $3,000 Charles Center Summer Research Grants. Honors Fellowship applicants selected for $3,000 awards must raise the remaining $3,000 for the full Honors Fellowship through the Honors Fellowship website. If a student raises more than $6,000, excess funds will be re-invested into other student research projects. 

Past Honors Fellows
Project Proposal

The project proposal must be uploaded (as a PDF) directly into the online application. This proposal should be no more than 2 single-spaced pages (including all supplemental materials) and should address the following:

  • What is the question you are hoping to answer with your research?
  • Layout the plan of exactly what you are going to do.
  • What resources are available to you for this project (lab space, access to archives, additional funding, etc.)?
  • What new knowledge or interpretation will emerge from this proposed project?
  • What will the deliverable be from your research (article, play, website, story map, etc.)?
Personal Statement

Upload (as a pdf)your 1 page single-spaced personal statement. The personal statement should explain the coursework and other intellectual influences which lead you to this project. Explain how this project fits into your academic plan. For example, is it something you are doing to prepare for graduate school or an interest that you haven't had a chance to explore yet. After reading your personal statement, a reviewer should understand the context of this project within your intellectual trajectory.
Transcript

Upload an unofficial (from Banner self-service), WM Banner transcript, including 2021 spring registration. You may copy from Banner and paste into a Word document but please make sure that you capture all course titles and grades AND delete excess white space. If you studied abroad or completed other off-campus academic work, please upload those transcripts, too.
Recommendation Letter

A recommendation letter is required from the W&M faculty member who has agreed to be your Honors Advisor. You must meet to discuss your proposal with the project advisor before registering them in the system. The letter of recommendation must be submitted by the applicationn deadline in order for your proposal to be considered for funding. You are responsible for checking online whether the letter has been submitted by the deadline.
Application to Honors

To apply for an Honors Fellowship your Honors project must first be approved by your Honors advisor and the head of the appropriate department / program. The Application for Admission to Honors Study must first be completed on this form, which will need to be printed and signed by the applicant, the Honors project advisor, and the Department Chair or Program Director.  The student will then upload the signed form to the Tribe Application Form. For questions concerning Departmental Honors, please email cchonors@wm.edu. (NOTE: Students applying for Honors Fellowships must have their signed form uploaded to the Tribe Form by February 14) 
Required Videotaping and Photos

To be included on the Honors Fellowship site, you must sign up for a time to film your video no later than noon on Friday, February 14. Video times are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, so applicants are advised to sign up as soon as possible. Videos will be shot on Thursday, February 20 and Friday, February 21 in Blow 201. Be sure to read through the Applicant Video Instructions prior to your appointment. Students studying abroad should read and follow the instructions in the Honors Fellowship applicant video instructions for students abroad.

All applicants must email three photos related to their Honors project to liz@theAVAdventure.com by 12 p.m. on Friday, February 14. The file names must be 'lastname, first name, 1; last name, first name, 2; last name, first name, 3." For example, 'Smith, John 1'  These photos will be included in the final 30-second video.
Additional Considerations

 

Student Institutional Review Board
If you are working with human subjects in any way, exemption by the Student Institutional Review Board or Protection of Human Subjects Committee is required at the time of application UNLESS your research falls under your faculty advisor's exemption. Ask your project advisor for clarification before you begin the IRB process. Note that the IRB process takes a significant amount of time and requires an online training module that must be completed by both you and your research advisor. Your IRB protocol must be exempted before you can receive funding from the Charles Center. 

Travel Insurance and Travel Warning Policy
If you plan to travel abroad for your research, the College requires that you purchase insurance for your time abroad. The Global Education Office at the Reves Center strongly recommends that you purchase Cultural Insurance Services International (CISI) insurance. Read more about CISI and how to purchase it.

If you plan to travel to a country which is on the State Department's Travel Warning list, you must petition for approval from the College under the W&M Travel Warning Policy. Petitions for summer 2020 Charles Center-funded travel/research/internship in a country under a Travel Warning must be received by [[nsvasquez, Nick Vasquez]], International Travel and Security Manager. See this page for details and plan to submit your petition by the February 14 Charles Center deadline. Your travel must be approved by the Travel Warning Review Committee before you can receive funding from the Charles Center. 
 What Happens Next?
  • Applications will be reviewed by the Undergraduate Research Committee.
  • Students who receive funding from the Charles Center will present their work at the fall or spring Research Symposia.
  • Want to talk to someone about how to get started? Make an appointment with a PSA.
  • Note that it is possible for an Honors Fellowship candidate to end up with something less than the $4,000 grant. In these cases the Charles Center will work with individual students to identify the most productive uses for the available funding for activities related to the honors project.
Deadline
  • All parts of the online application are due by noon on Friday, February 14, 2020.

All of the 2020 W&M Honors Fellowship applicants whose materials are submitted by the deadline will appear on the donor website, there is no additional selection process. 

drop-down menu of application details
2018-2019 Honors Fellows

Caroline Abbott, The Dimetrodon Dilemma: Reassessing Posture in Sphenacodonts
Mark Agrios, Simplicial Homology and Neural Networks
David Allen, The Totally Positive Matrix Completion Problem
Junda An, Tilings in Two-dimensional Hexagonal Grid
Nathaniel Anderson, Egoism and the Repugnant Conclusion
Jill Ashey, The Effect of Environmental History on the Stress Response of the Eastern Oysters
Katherine Avery, (In)Human Anatomy: Constructions of Otherness in the Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
Matthew Baker, The Biological Inhibition of Sea Grass Restoration 
Zachary Baldwin, Exclusive Pi-zero Production and Compton Scattering at GlueX
Grace Becker, Heart Rate Variability Response to Acute Hypoxia Exposure as a Predictor of Endurance Performance 
Sarah Bottari, Empathy and Etiology: Understanding the Role of Social Perception in the Development of Internalizing and Externalizing Behavioral Disorders  
Courtney Check, Informing Amphibian Conservation: Nonbreeding Season Movement and Habitat Use in Three Species of Pond-breeding Frogs
Riley Covert, Ethics, Ontology, and the Environment: How Implicit Assumptions Shape the World Around Us
Laila Drury, Resilience to Depression and Anxiety: Grit, Conscientiousness, and Mindfulness in Long Distance Runners
Hope Duke, Structural and Thermochronological Analysis of the Central Virginia Piedmont: A Time and Depth Reconstruction from Collision to Rifting
Kathryn Eckler, Christianity During Times of Crisis: The European Refugee Movement
Emma Efkeman, The Effects of Space on Hindu Devotional Objects in Museums and Temples
Daniil Eliseev, Regionalism, Nationalism, and Language Attitudes in the English-Official West Indies
Alfredo Fallorina, Assessing the Effects of Abiotic Stressors on Plants Using Single-sided NMR
Carolyn Farling, Increasing the Enhancement Factor of Silver Nanoparticles for Pigment Identification
Victoria Fong, A Defense of Representationalism Against the Inverted Spectrum and Blur Objections
Sara Franklin-Gillette, Peer Emotion Socialization and the Development of Aggressive Behavior in Adolescence 
Holly Funkhouser, Impacts of Projected Sea Level Rise on Diamondback Terrapin Nesting Habitats and Applications for Living Shorelines
Rebecca Gaborek, Gardens Beneath the Ash: Contextualizing Natural Imagery Within Pompeii's Urban Fabric
Elizabeth Gallary, Picky Eating During Childhood and the Role of Sensory Factors in Food Acceptance
Allison Greenday, Food Insecurity in the Hanover Community: How Data Collection can Improve Community Policy
Schuyler Blake Hani, Falling Backward: Trauma and Loss in 20th Century American Literature
Yukuan Hao, Zhao Erfeng in Tibet 
Catherine Harvey, Understanding Cell Division By Looking at Potential Kinases that Cause Ulp1 Inhibition 
Zhengyang Huang, Projecting Emotion: Multimedia Installation in Studio Art Practices
Alexis Jenkins, Traditional Practices and Shifting Perceptions in Mattaponi and Pamunkey Fisheries in Virginia
Jackie Keshner, "Strengthened by Worth": Economic and Moral Value in The Blazing World and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
Erin Kitchens, Interactions Between Locals and Asylum Seekers in Italy
William Lake, Evaluation of Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction 
Emma Lather, Response of Wetland Bird Populations to Neighboring Land Use Land Cover Change
Benjamin Lazarus, Controlled Hierarchical Structure Additive Manufacturing
Hayden Le, The Court of Social Media: Leveraging Computational Methods to Predict Public Response to Sexual Misconduct News Stories
Sarah Lettau, The Harkis in France: Identity, Memory and Generation as Tools of Political Recognition
Zhengyuan Paul Ling, Shift of Japan's Stance on Manchuria
Kelsey Llewellyn, Oppression Through Possession: Examining the Relationship Between Things and Global Consciousness in Edwardian Literature
Alexander Love, Legislative Barriers to Modern Bail Reform
Pauline Lynch, Investigating Dye-Sensitized Photocatalysis Using Single Molecule Spectroscopy
Xufan Ma, A Sociological Exploration of Intimate Relationships among Chinese International Students at the College of William and Mary
Sri Harshini Malapati, The Impact of Thyroid Hormone Receptor Mutations on the Development of Liver Cancer
Sarah Marksteiner, The Creation of an Original "Cymbeline" Companion Piece: Informed by Immersive Study of Elizabethan Theatre in Practice
Anna McAnnally, Reclassifying Emily Dickinson's Variant Poems
Daniel McNeil, Positive Parenting: The Effects of Parental Supportive Responses on Teen Emotions and Mental Health
Zach Meredith, Documenting the History and Social Impact of the Williamsburg Redevelopment & Housing Authority
Becca Merriman-Goldring, SERS Analysis of Ozone Fading of Madder Lake and Carmine Paints
Yiqin Miao, An Intercultural Study and Staging of the Play Secret Love in Peach Blossom Island with Multi-ethnic Casts
Grace Murray, The Effect of Ideological Stratification on the Supreme Court's Stance on Tribal Sovereignty
Emily Mushlitz, Paleoclimate History and Storm Variance in Sandsvatn, Faroe Islands
Ryan Onders, Billy's Burg: Investigating Time, Language, and Identity in a Colonial Context
Ivie Orobaton, An Analysis of Infectious Disease of African Americans from Slavery through the 20th Century
Ellie Rakoff, The Urban Maasai of Dar es Salaam: Reconciling Pastoralist Ancestry and Modernizing Identities 
Leah Roemer, Implications of Colonialism for the Marriage of Western and Traditional Health Practices in Dakar, Senegal
Brent Russell, Utilization of ULP1 in the Development of a Novel Prostate Cancer Test
Stephen Ryan, Britain and the Continent: Henry Fielding and the Idea of Europe
Kate Sandberg, Persuasion in Discourse: Evaluation Strategies of Vegans
Anna South, Beowulf: Examining Translation and Adaptation in the Modern World
Indira Stevens, Photocatalytic Systems for Solar Hydrogen Generation Using Naturally Occurring Electron Donors
Rick Stevenson, Life in the Modern World: Emerging American Identities in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio
Xiangwen Sun, Effects of Tax Structure on Economic Growth
Xiaopeng Sun, Mathematical Model of Competition between NCoR1 and Exportin for Binding TRa1
Anna Tsutsui, Characterization of Flame-resistant Polymers by Single-sided NMR
Jonathan Van Name, Discovering the Ion Channel Mechanisms of Breathing
Xiye Wang, Synthesis of (+)-serantrypinone, a Potent GABA Inhibitor
Abby Whitlock, Knights of the Air: Social Identity in the Royal Flying Corps
John Williams, Have Ghede, Will Travel: An Examination of Ancestor Veneration Among Vodouisants in Boston
Katharine Williams, Unspeakable Sensations: Decoding the Language of Touch in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel
Colleen Wilson, Sowing Corruption: Ignominious Burials in Dickens and Hardy
Anna Wingfield, Wordsworth's British Empire: Liberty, Property, and the Slave Question
Jordan Wyner, Kafka in Space: Investigating Public Space in Fin-De-Siecle Prague and Franz Kafka's Literature
Robert Yancey, The Second Sophistic, Identity, and Egypt: Sarapion's Honorary Inscription and Local Identities in the Roman Empire
Rui Yin, The Role of SUMO Modification on Protein Mislocalization in Cancer 
Ying Zhang, Chinese Export Porcelain of the Seventeenth Century
Tianrui Zhu, Analysis of Electronic Signals from Neonatal Intensive Care Units
2017-2018 Honors Fellows
Brittany Acors, Religious Reformations, Then and Now
Brian Anyakoha, Jr., Social Anxiety, Pain, & Exclusion: The Hidden Link
Lydia Boike, Oxidative Stress and Lactate Dehydrogenase: Understanding the Biochemistry of Alzheimer's
Thomas Briggs, Unifying Hannah Arendt's Theory of Judgment
Dara Bright, School is Cool: A Comparative Study of the Attitudes of High School African-American Males and Females Towards College in Different Socio-Economic Environments
Hannah Bruzzio, Particle Manipulation and Cross-step Filtration in the American Shad
Gowri Buddiga, Reproductive Justice for All: Contraception Policy and the Legacy of Settler Colonialism in United States, Australia, and Canada
Jessica Campbell, Perception of Stress in L1 and L2 Spanish and English
Anna Chahuneau, Pursuing the Monarchs: A Documentary
Jessica Crowley, Modeling the Inhibition of Calcium Influx in Axon Degeneration
DeLauren Davis, To What Extent Are Hegemonic Norms of Masculinity Evoked and Emphasized Through Membership in Black Greek Letter Organizations?
Charlotte DeForest, Myth of a Nation: Nationalism in the Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien and Neil Gaiman
AnnaTram Do, Hydrogen-Deuterium Exchange and Fragmentation Studies of Peptides Containing Lysine, Serine and Cysteine Homologs
Chen Dong, Molecular Mechanisms of Neural Plasticity Following Anterior-Posterior Axis Rotation of Xenopus laevis Central Nervous System
Rachel Dubit, A Song of Arms and of the Goddess: What a Critical Reading of the Carmen de Bello Actiaco Reveals about the Roman Conquest of Egypt under Octavian
Emily Earls, The Cultural Influences on Argentine Abortion Policy
Sora Edwards-Thro, Syans fiksyon: Defining Science Fiction For A Haitian Context
Kexin Fan, Association Between Diploid OipA in Asian Strains of Helicobacter pylori and High Prevalence of Asian Gastric Cancer
Dana Florczak, Fighting Against the Backlash: Women's Solidarity in Contemporary Fiction
Hannah Gourdie, Factors Predicting Enactment of Abortion Clinic Access Laws
Theresa Gozzo, Investigating Post-Translational Modification of Transcription Factor in Gastric Cancer Risk Contributor, Heliobacter pylori, via Bottom-Up Proteomics
Jesse Granger, Diatomaceous Solar Cells
Mary Grutta, Supporting Meaningful Career Paths: Effects of Mentoring on Vocational Outcomes for Emerging Adults
Sarah Heins, Complexities of Communication: William Carlos Williams's Medical Narratives and the Exploration of Language
Michelle Hermes, Operationalizing the Holocaust Complex: The Effect of Age on Perceptions towards Refugees in Germany
Danting Jiang, The Role of Protein-Coding and Regulatory Evolution in Speciation of Wild Yeast
Emma Johnson, The Mythologized Man's Maladjustment in a Post-War World
Yajna Jowaheer, The Role of Implicit Racial Attitudes in Predicting Perceptions of Drug Users
Anna Kenan, The Mechanism of arsR in the Acid Response System of Helicobacter pylori
William Kim, Polymer Composites containing Boron Nitride Nanotubes for Thermal Management
Likhitha Kolla, Profiling Nuclear Autophagy in ALS
Yoojin Kook, Mental Health and Resilience in First Generation College Students
Katherine Lang, Structural Geology of the Blue Ridge Tunnel, Rockfish Gap, Virginia
Heather Lawrence, Imagining Oppression in Young Adult Dystopian Literature
Yoongbok Lee, Public-key Cryptography Using Nonabelian Groups
Elijah Levine, Performing the Spiritual in Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme"
Xiang Liu, Mathematical Studies of Optimal Economic Growth with Monetary Policy
Sri Harshavardhan Malapati, Wallerian Degeneration in ALS
Emma Merrill, The Ideology, Policy, and Market for Firearms in Virginia
Rose Olwell, African Mothers and French Fathers: The Debate Over Mixed Race Children in Colonial French West Africa
Zachary Oppler, The Genetic Basis for Social Phenotypes in S. cerevisiae
Sophia Palia, Behavioral Effects of Noise Pollution on the Zebra Finch
Elena Parcell, Meiotic Defects of a C. elegans Mutant 
Kristin Passero, Characterizing the Subcellular Localization of Mutant Thyroid Hormone Alpha (Ala382ProfsX7)
Jen Peek, RNF4's Role in Stripping Transcriptionally-Active Huntingtin on a Genome Wide Level
Rachel Plummer, The Effects of Appearance-Related Media on Men's and Women's Body Image
Andrea Powers, The Small Arms Revolution: An Analysis of Small Arms Proliferation, Non-stat Actor Power, Major Power Defense Strategy, and How This All Fits Together
Mark Pownall, The Role of Ploidy in Embryonic Plasticity
Samantha Ryan, Behind the Curtain: Althea Hunt as Directress, Professor, and Feminist
Michael Salomon, Investigating Cancer-Causing Mutations
Megan Screen, Artificial Photosynthesis: Hydrogen Fuel Generation via Transition Metal Complexes
Rafael Snell-Feikema, Capitalist Anti-Capitalists, Racists Anti-Racists; the Normativity of Whiteness in Left Spaces
Daniel Speer, Accessing the Cannabinoid Family of Compounds through an Alkynyl-Prins Cyclization
Aparajita Sur, Exploring the Evolutionary and Molecular Dynamics of Mixed Biofilms to Disrupt their Stability
Nita Takanti, Protein Proteomics: Using HPLC-MS to Analyze Peptide Fragments
Caitlin Taylor, The Effect of Implicit Biases on Discriminatory Behavior Towards Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Catherine Valery, Eclogitization and Shear Zone Kinematics in the Lofoten Islands, Norway
Yonghao Wang, In Defense of Property Dualism
Madeline White, From Being to Thing: The Commodification and Mistreatment of Pets in America
Ryan Wilmington, Enhancing the Capabilities of Infrared Microscopy Apparatus
Hannah Winckler-Olick, Ethical Borders: The Ethics of Citizenship as a Partial Relationship
Devon Wolfe, J.S. Mill and Representative Democracy in the Athenian Spirit
Shichuan Xi, Investigation of the Catalytic Ability of an Amine-functionalized Polypyridyl Iron Complex for Hydrogen Generation
Yanxin Xu, Ultra-High-Dimensional Statistical Learning
Justin Yu, Ultrafast Two-dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for Ingression of Solvent Treatments in Paint
Bowen Zhang, Non-parametric Classification and Estimation
Xin Zou, A Mathematical Model of Economic Growth of Two Geographical Regions
2016-2017 Honors Fellows
Anastasia Rivera
Lyuba Bolkhovitinov
Colleen Flynn
Dongsun Heo
Michelle Barbeau
McNeill Bauer
Aaron Bayles
Courtney Blackington
Jacob Brammer
Eboni Brown
Lydia Brown
Hannah Bunting
Yuming Cao
Lindsay Chatkewitz
Sarah Collier
Arya Dahal
Bernadette Deschaine
Ebimene Doubeni
Meghan Downey
Kristen Ekstrom
Christine Fulgham
Mary Garrett
Hunter Gentry
Logan George
Stephen Gurley
Brooks Henne
Anna Henshaw
Edward Hernandez
Danielle Horridge
Christina Howard
Emmaleah Jones
Cody Jones
Kevin Kay
Sang Kim
Sarah Kinniburgh
Polly Lauer
Thomas Le
Caroline Martin
Emily Masi
Matthew McGuinness
Rachel Merriman-Goldring
Francis Pham
Meagan Phillips
Natalee Price
Alexa Rosalsky
Daniel Rosenberg
Rachel Rosenfeld
Kharis Schrage
Abigail Simon
Sarah Stratton
James Sylvester
Colleen Truskey
Cody Turner
Quentin Ullrich
John Weaver
Alexander Williams
Matthew Wong
Lauren Wood
Ellen Yates
Joshua Zimmt
Julia Zuercher
2015-2016 Honors Fellows

Catherine Acio
Karl Adryan Flores
Isaac Alty
Mary Andino
Laurel Brockenberry
Hannah Brooks
Noah Brooksher
Alyssa Brown
Evan Cunningham
Connor Dantzler
Emily Draper
Kristin Edwards
Yussre El-Bardicy
Katie Fee
Brenna Ferris
Reynolds Hahamovitch
Megan Haney Claus
Carolyn Hartley
Emily Harmon
Zachariah Hasan
Chantal Houglan
Doo Hyun Nam
Bina Kakusa
Anton Lachowicz
Ebony Lambert
Robert LaRose
Cassandra Leong
Natalie Libster
Emma McGregor
David McPherson
Gabrielle Mecca
Frankie Morin
Minu Nagashunmugam
Emily Nye
Marshall Padilla
Sarah Perry
Nic Querolo
Davis Richardson
Jeremy Ross
Jillian Sequeira
Brent Sherwood
Hannah Smith
Patrick Smith
Wangxiaoqi Sun
Jenna Tan
Olivia Trani
Katianna Tron
Sarah Volz
Karyne Williams
Fangyi Xu
2014-2015 Honors Fellows

Salma Abdel-Raheem
Jacob Abrams
Emma Albert-Stone
Eri Anastas
Maura Brennan
Tyler Brent
Isabel Bush
Alana Burton
Christian Chamberlayne
Dave Geroski
Madeline Grimm
Nicholas Gupta
Melissa Hey
Heather Hoskins
Natalie Hudson-Smith
Lauren Jean
Elisabeth Laird
Casey Lardner
Lucas Leblanc
Maren Leibowitz
Jacob Lisi
Emily Mahoney
Addie Merians
Chloe Miksovic
Adam Mullet
William Plews-Ogan
Laura Pugh
Yusheng Qin
Alison Roberts
Jacqueline Romero
Tanner Russo
Alyssa Samuel
Jake Schneider
Hae Seong Kim
Marvin Shelton
Katherine Shipman
Carly Shira
Rachel Sillcox
Lillian Singer
Jackson Stone
Ashby Sturgis
Danielle Tassara
Grace Taumoefolau
Casey Thompson
Claire Tocheny
Catherine Wise
Stephanie Wraith