2026 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.

10/15 Session 1: Review of the Fellowship, and writing timeline, finding a Yale project advisor, formulating a research question, searching for literature, using a citation manager, and preparing the background section

10/22: NO SESSION - FALL BREAK

10/29 Session 2: Preparing the sections: goals, specific aims, and abstract

11/5 Session 3: Study design and methods

11/12 Session 4: Remaining components of the application

11/19 Session 5: Understanding the IRB review process