"Best Practices" - Terms and Conditions of Award

Recruitment • Selection • Terms and Conditions of Award • Monitoring and Evaluation

1. Programs should be as flexible as possible, within the limitations of award terms and conditions. For example, the following award terms may affect decisions by women candidates to accept a fellowship offer:

   • availability of health insurance for accompanying dependents

   • length of award (with multi-year awards sometime problematic)

   • emergency assistance/travel funds for mid-program visits home

   • possibilities for conducting some portion of the work in the home country, combined with short-term experience abroad (i.e, so-called "sandwich" programs).

2. Programs with age restrictions, either at the upper or lower levels, should closely examine those limitations and reconsider their value. For women particularly, there is a correlation between age restrictions and numbers of applicants. Programs with a commitment to greater participation by women should recognize that the pool of candidates may well increase if open to younger women, who may not yet have children, or older women, whose children may have grown, rather than confining age eligibility to peak child-rearing years.

3. Some programs have developed strategies specifically to help applicants from under-represented groups through the difficult stage once they have been selected for the overseas study awards, when they may face opposition from family members or employers to accepting the award. These programs try to work directly with the candidate and family/employers to resolve troubling issues where possible and to help family/employers understand better the program benefits. Programs should recognize that, for women especially, family-centered objections may arise, and staff should prepare appropriate responses/strategies. Programs might also address such potential problems earlier in the process, by:

   • stating up-front in the informational material that the program may be flexible in certain terms and conditions of its awards and that interested candidates should discuss any issues of concern with staff in advance.

   • extending an explicit offer of help to successful candidates to work with them and their family/employers to resolve specific obstacles or problems, noting that earlier candidates have successfully resolved such issues with staff assistance.

4. Some programs have found a highly successful and cost-effective approach to providing more overseas scholarships to women is to provide a "package" including support for accompanying spouses to study while overseas. This eliminates many of the family problems of recipients (plus a savings in housing costs, etc.) and enables the program to aid greater numbers of recipients with a modest increase in cost. Male and female spouses are able to take advantage of overseas training informally, while their spouses with awards complete their own formal study programs.

5. Program alumnae/i may be an untapped resource in designing flexible and pragmatic approaches to problems relating to the terms and conditions of awards. Programs should make use of this resource and turn to alumnae/i for assistance, based on their own experiences. For example, some programs have found that the greatest help they can give recipients who have brought small children with them is to put them in touch with present and former fellowship holders who have figured out how to deal with such problems such as finding appropriate schools and day care facilities. Moral support early on from alumnae/i can help candidates to accept the award and thrive in the program.