Dear Parents and Families,

I’m grateful for this chance to introduce myself to you and tell you a little about my office. Scholar Development can be a confusing term—after all, every student is a scholar, and late adolescence is a period of intense personal and professional development. Put simply, what my office does is help students find opportunities for independent research and scholarship beyond the boundaries of the classroom. Along the way, students make connections between their personal and intellectual development—and perhaps this is what it really means to become a scholar.

There are many routes to this “development.” I run the application processes for nationally competitive prestigious awards such as the Fulbright, Goldwater, Rhodes, and Marshall, and help direct students to a host of other opportunities. I also help students identify opportunities closer to home, including Tufts’ undergraduate research fund and our Summer Scholars program.

Winning a nationally competitive scholarship can launch a student’s life in a completely new direction, opening up doors that they had never considered and introducing them to experiences that permanently change their perspective on the world. Whether your student plans to make their mark on the world through scientific discovery, artistic vision, public service, or education, we help them navigate the application process and find the necessary resources to put together the strongest possible articulation of their particular intellectual and personal strengths.

At the same time, the odds of winning are long—as low as 3%, and that’s from a pool of students who have already been selected by a competitive process at their home institutions. Winning is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s important to remember that the application process itself offers up a set of concrete and valuable benefits:

·  Stronger writing

·  Clearer long-term goals

·  Connections with faculty and professional mentors

·  Personal introspection and self-knowledge

While most of the application cycles occur during junior or senior year, a student can start thinking about preparing for nationally competitive awards as early as their first or second year at Tufts. One way you can help your student is to encourage them to make an appointment with their academic adviser and/or with my office about opportunities for independent research early on in their academic careers. Our students are incredibly engaged, both in and outside the classroom—we advise students to help them see the connections among their passions so that they can best engage the world around them.

Independent research and applying for competitive awards help students to take themselves and their ideas seriously. Our office is here to help students push the limits of what they can imagine for their futures. After all, it’s only by imagining that future that they can make it happen.

Take care,

Anne Moore, PhD
Program Specialist, Scholar Development