The Lampert Institute Summer Fellowship program supports up to six first- and second-year students annually to pursue opportunities that cultivate early, inquiry-driven engagement with major global questions.
Centered on the Lampert Institute’s two core themes, the changing world order and science, technology, and public policy, these self-designed experiences should support students in exploring real-world issues through research, internships, creative projects, service work, and more. Participants are encouraged to approach their chosen topic with humility and curiosity, focusing not on finding predetermined answers but on deepening their understanding of the question, its broader context, and others’ perspectives.
2026 Lampert Summer Fellows
Madeleine Callahan ’29 will conduct research with Professor Jonathan Levine on the NASA DIMPLE mission, supporting the lunar experiment by analyzing prototype hardware, optimizing data collection methods, and helping plan mission operations to ensure successful scientific measurements within the Moon’s limited operational window.
Helena Cerutti ’28 plans to research the Great Power Competition among the U.S., Russia, and China, focusing on intelligence, military, economic, and technological strategies, through academic research or a think tank internship to develop expertise for a future career in national security.
Kriti Dhakal ’29 plans to investigate the epidemiology and barriers to treatment of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Nepal through collaboration with local research institutions and has applied to the SAARC Internship Program.
Hiba Farooq ’29 secured an internship with Global Youth NGO to explore how inadequate menstrual education and school infrastructure in rural Pakistan affect girls’ education. She will conduct fieldwork to document myths, gather student perspectives, and develop supportive educational materials.
Ja’Zhana Henderson ’28 will be conducting research through the NIH Summer Internship Program. In Bethesda, she will investigate the molecular mechanisms that enable sensory regeneration in some nervous system contexts but not others, with the goal of understanding how tissue repair can be activated and applied to human neurological conditions at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
Agnes Kaumbulu ’28 will study Kenya’s educational shift to the competency-based curriculum through campus research and fieldwork, analyzing how educational reforms affect equity, learning outcomes, and policy implementation.
How to Apply
2027 Eligibility: Must be a student from the class of 2029 or 2030.
Application deadline: February 2027
Fellowship placement: The specifics of the opportunity need not be finalized at the time of application. The Office of National Fellowships and Scholarships will work with you to find an optimal placement or opportunity.
Submit the required materials to onfs@colgate.edu. Materials should be submitted as one PDF. Please include your name in the title of the document.
Application Requirements
- Personal statement, 500 words max: Clearly convey your motivations and demonstrate how your formative experiences have shaped your academic pursuits and future aspirations. As you write, consider the guiding points:
- Tell us more about yourself. What are you studying and why did you choose Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ?
- Before Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ, what is at least one experience that shaped your worldview?
- At Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ, what have you been involved with outside of classes or labs?
- What might be your plans after Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ?
- Tell us about any plans to apply to national fellowships in the future.
- In your career, what do you dream of doing?
- Project proposal, 500 words max: Describe what you hope to pursue over the summer with the Lampert Summer Fellowship funding. The main goal of the project should be to explore and understand the problem, and it need not focus on a solution. Consider the following when writing the project proposal:
- What real-world problem, topic, or issue do you want to explore and better understand?
- How did you find out or become interested in this topic?
- In the eight weeks or longer during the summer, what do you propose to do, whether it be by an internship (volunteer), research assistantship, scholarly endeavor, or residency?
- Where and with whom?
- What methods or approaches will you use to explore your topic? This can include artistic or musical approaches.
- What do you hope to learn? And how might this learning be applied in the future? How would you communicate what you may have learned?
- Resume or CV