Downs Fellowship Proposal Writing Workshops

This workshop is intended for applicants for the 2026 Downs Fellowship. It is intended to provide students with an understanding of the Downs fellowship and application process, with an emphasis on crafting a research proposal. Although this workshop is not mandatory for applicants, attendance is taken into consideration by the Downs Committee during the interview and scoring process.

In addition, only students who attend 3 or more of the workshops will be eligible for review and feedback of their proposal draft outline from the primary instructor. This is intended to limit the requests for review from applicants that were not active in participating in the educational workshops.

Session 1: Understanding the Downs Fellowship, Application, and Finding a Project Advisor

Session 2: Formulating research question, literature searches, citation managers, and preparing background section

Session 3: Preparing the goals, specific aims, and abstract

Session 4: Overview of the Yale Human Research Protection Program and the Institutional Review Board

Session 5: Study Design and Methods

Session 6: Remaining application components