Applicants must fulfill a number of criteria. "In most cases the criteria are for work in non-profit organizations, public service and humanitarian work. These are traditionally non-paid or underpaid activities during the summer, and we try to help students to manage this financially," said Hoffa. "Our goal is to help as many people as possible that meet these criteria."
When applying for a fellowship, students must fill out a budget plan for their funds. "We ask students to describe the project so we can get a sense of the purpose of the organization and to get a sense of what the student will be doing," said Hoffa. "We ask them to submit a budget with reasonable assessments of what their needs are. Needs include room, board, travel and whether there are other stipends from other sources," she said.
Fellowships are granted for internships in fields ranging from scientific research to work with underprivileged children. Hoffa hypothesized that the same number of students are spending their summers working non-profit jobs, but the number of applicants increased. "[Students are] more aware of these fellowships now, and I don't think this is necessarily because students are doing anything different in a major way, I just think they're more aware that this is an option," she said. "This is a major fund to help support public service activity and humanitarian work both domestic and international."
This year, in addition to financial stipends, the career center fully funded internship positions for a few students. "If you get a certain internship, it has a certain amount attached to it and the student becomes a named intern," said Hoffa. These fully funded positions are for the same type of outside service work as other positions.a
However, there are not enough resources to fund all positions for all applicants. According to Hoffa, there are many applicants each year who do not fulfill all criteria and therefore cannot receive fellowships. In many cases, even students who fulfill criteria cannot receive as much money as they would like. "Since we might have funds more in one area than another, even though students might be meeting criteria, we might not be able to help everybody in the same way," Hoffa said.
According to Hoffa, alumni donations for fellowships go into an endowed fund. "Resulting from that [fund] is interest, and we distribute the interest from the fund. The fund stays there but provides a certain amount of available money each year," said Hoffa. "The alumni have been extraordinarily generous and we hope to have even more [fellowship opportunities] in the future."