This year, the Recruitment and Selection Committees combined to create a more streamlined process for managing the outreach process prior to and coordinating the process after applications have been submitted. The six-person strong committee pooled their collective resources to launch recruitment during a busy academic season and as GW welcomes our 17th president,, Dr. Thomas LeBlanc.
In an effort to recruit high-achieving and motivated GW seniors to benefit from and provide benefit to the university as Presidential Fellows, current Fellows sent a flurry of emails and held one-on-one meetings and five information sessions to spread the word and information about this opportunity to receive free graduate education and an opportunity to give back to GW. Fellows’ recruitment efforts over the past several weeks also allowed them and the program to engage with over a hundred GW student organizations, dozens of academic programs, and individual GW students themselves.
Information sessions, particularly, served as a useful avenue to recruit and also interact with, the GW student body. Over a hundred students attended the five sessions for the opportunity to learn more about the program and ask specific questions. The final session, on October 13th, culminated Fellows’ proactive recruitment efforts, though we certainly received dozens of inquiries on a monitored inquiry log from prospective applicants around and before the October 23rd application deadline.
The program’s selection process, getting underway over the next few weeks and continuing well into finals season and the early part of the spring semester, will consist of three rounds of review, designed to assess candidates on a holistic set of criteria to identify the 2018-20 cohort.
We are grateful to friends of the Presidential Fellowship program, especially our alumni, for their ongoing support and assistance with helping us both recruit and select our next cohort of Presidential Fellows. Stay tuned for further updates as the selection process gets underway!