NSF Scholarship Program (New Version)
Requirements For Students Who Entered the Scholarship Program After May 2004
Overview
The criteria for the selection of scholarship recipients included evidence of academic potential
(e.g. grade point averages, standardized test scores, performance in undergraduate research projects,
letters of reference); progress toward degree (completion of 15-18 credits per semester);
and workplace/career potential (e.g. extracurricular involvement, internship performance, career goals).
Some of these criteria obviously only applied to students who were already in the CIS major
at Saint Vincent College, while others (such as the letters of reference) only applied to new students.
Students were not expected to demonstrate performance in all of these categories.
Rather, these were some of the ways to document one's potential.
Activities for the NSF-CIS Scholarship recipients included mentoring seminars and on-line mentoring with
project partners in technology and technology-related fields; research projects supported through
competitive grants from Saint Vincent's Palumbo student research endowment fund;
and participation as CIS tutors. An external Advisory Board assisted with project activities.
What criteria were used in the selection of the scholarship winners?
- For new students the criteria were as follows.
- Must be full-time CIS majors at Saint Vincent College.
- Must be U.S. citizens, nationals, refugee aliens, or permanent resident aliens.
- Freshmen who entered the college in the fall of 2004
or 2005 were eligible for these NSF scholarships.
- Transfer and change of major students who entered at any time up to and including
spring 2005 were also eligible.
- Good (but not necessarily outstanding) academic potential or ability. (To
be able to renew the scholarship from year to year the student was expected to
meet the GPA criteria shown in the next section below.)
- Workplace/career potential. (This was partly assessed from the answers to the scholarship
application questions and from the required letters of recommendation.)
- Demonstrated financial need. (Students' regular applications for financial aid
and FAFSA determined this.)
- For those who were already Saint Vincent College students (such as students who changed
major into CIS) the criteria were as follows:
- Must be full-time CIS majors at Saint Vincent College.
- Must be U.S. citizens, nationals, refugee aliens, or permanent resident aliens.
- Freshmen who entered the college in the fall of 2003 were eligible
for these NSF scholarships.
- Transfer and change of major students who entered at any time up to and including spring 2004
were also eligible.
- Good (but not necessarily outstanding) academic potential or ability. The usual
expectation was a GPA of 2.5 overall and a GPA of 2.8 in the CIS major.
- Workplace/career potential. (This was partly assessed from the answers to the scholarship
application questions and the responses in a required interview.)
- Demonstrated financial need. (Students' regular applications for financial aid
and FAFSA determined this.
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What were the requirements to continue to receive these scholarships?
There were a number of conditions, but these were not intended to be overly demanding. For example,
there was no requirement that a student work within the state after graduation (since this
was a federal grant project). In general, the scholarship winners were expected to
take part in a few activities that were designed to help them to be better prepared
for the work force and to have a good chance of success. Some of these were required,
perhaps in specific years. Others were encouraged, but optional. A summary of the
activities is listed below. The details of implementing these can be seen on the
NSF Scholarship Program Activities page.
- Freshmen were to meet at least 3 times per semester with their assigned junior or senior mentors.
- While there were freshmen and sophomores in the program, there were at least 4
annual career/mentoring meetings with speakers from industry, alumni,
etc. Freshmen and sophomores had to attend at least 2 of these per year.
Others were encouraged to attend.
- Freshmen and sophomores were sometimes required to see our tutors if we saw a need for
this type of help. Details on this tutoring requirement were provided to each student to
which it applied.
- Freshmen and sophomores were also sometimes required to attend review sessions if we saw a need.
- Sophomores were given an email mentor (from industry and/or alumni contacts) and were to briefly
review this experience with their faculty advisors.
- Awardees were asked to complete at least one internship (paid or unpaid) in a
technology field, probably around the junior or senior year.
- Juniors and seniors functioned as tutors and mentors for younger students,
sometimes ran review sessions for younger students, and occasionally functioned as mentors
for school students.
- Awardees were encouraged to apply for Palumbo grants for student research
and to participate in other research programs and projects to show their computer science
or IT abilities.
- Since transfer and change of major students are something of a hybrid, often having
junior standing in terms of number of credits but sometimes more like freshmen or
sophomores in terms of CS courses completed, the activity requirements for these
students were typically a mixture taken from the various categories above. The exact requirements
for these students were worked out on an individual basis.
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Application Deadline
It is now past the deadline to apply. No new scholarships can be provided to our students under
this NSF program. However, students already receiving these scholarships can continue to do so as long
as they meet the requirements of the program.
This scholarship program was supported by the National Science Foundation's
Computer Science,
Engineering, and Mathematics Scholarships program under grant DUE-0122934.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of
the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Go to the main NSF-CIS Scholarship Program Page
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