Support for Honors and DMP Thesis Research
The Politics Department is pleased to announce competitive funding for undergraduate thesis research. The Department will award grants of up to $1,000 up to five students in the Politics Honors and Distinguished Majors Program for whom the money can enhance their project (i.e., costs associated with conducting original survey research, data access, travel).
Applicants should submit their proposals to Sharon Marsh smm4g@virginia.edu via email. Applications must be received no later than November 18, 2020. We will announce award recipients by the end of the semester.
Proposals must include:
- Cover sheet, including student’s name, contact information, thesis advisor, and project title.
- Project description – no more than 2 pages, 12 point font – delineating the research question, summarizing the research design, and describing how the grant money will be used and why it’s necessary. We will not read beyond two pages, but you may include works cited on a third page.
- Transcript
- Letter of recommendation from your thesis advisor (this can be sent directly by your advisor to Sharon Marsh).
The selection committee – Professors Michael Smith, Murad Idris, Anne Meng, and Jim Ceaser – will only consider complete applications.
For further information, please contact Sharon Marsh.
Quandt International Research Fund
The Quandt International Research Fund was established by the Department of Politics to honor William Quandt, a distinguished faculty member and well-known expert on Middle Eastern politics. The Fund assists students and faculty in the Department to pursue studies and research abroad by making travel grants to defray the cost of international travel. The awards are administered annually by a faculty committee.
Grants of up to $4,000 are made to Politics students, undergraduate and graduate, planning international study in any region or country, including structured programs and individual research. Grants can also be made to Politics faculty for research abroad. Applicants should inform the committee of other funding applications, and grantees should inform the committee of overlapping awards.
More details about the award and about Professor Quandt are available here.
Charles H. Koch, Jr. Award
The Charles H. Koch Jr. Award provides financial support up to $5,000 to help cover the expenses of internships related to foreign affairs of students in the College of Arts and Sciences, with a focus on internships requiring travel abroad.
The Koch Award is currently on hold until international travel is feasible.
Who is Charles H. Koch Jr.?
Professor Charles H. Koch Jr. was a professor of law at the College of William & Mary from 1979 until his passing in 2012. Professor Koch's areas of expertise included administrative law, comparative constitutional systems, electricity, the European Union, and federal courts. While he primarily focused on U.S. administrative law, he began learning and teaching about the European Union because he saw its growing importance both to the U.S. in the global legal environment and ultimately to domestic law.
He received his B.A. from the University of Maryland, his J.D. from George Washington University and his LL.M. from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the William & Mary faculty in 1979, he worked as a staff attorney in the Office of the General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission and taught at DePaul University College of Law. He served as Assistant Chief Reporter of the ABA's Administrative Law of the European Union Project and was Past President of the Committee on Sections and Annual Meetings of the Administrative Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools. He was a member of the ABA's United Nations Affairs Coordinating Committee. He also served for seven years as Editor-in-Chief of the Administrative Law Review and twice acted as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Professor Koch was a prolific writer, publishing books for both teaching and practice, and numerous articles in law reviews and practitioner-oriented journals. His books included Administrative Law and Practice (2d ed.), Administrative Law of the European Union, Volume 1 (with George Bermann), Federal Practice and Procedure Volumes 32 and 33 (with Charles Alan Wright), Administrative Law: Cases and Materials (5th ed., with William Jordan & Richard Murphy), West's Federal Administrative Practice, Volume 7, The Federal Administrative Judiciary (with Paul Verkuil, Daniel Gifford, Richard Pierce and Jeffrey Lubbers) and Fundamentals of Administrative Practice (with Donald Rothschild).
He is survived by his wife, Denise, and his son, Andrew (COL '12).