Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is a private non-profit operating foundation based in Princeton, New Jersey. It administers programs that support leadership development and build organizational capacity in education. Its current signature program is the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship. It also continues to support a range of other programs.

The first Woodrow Wilson Fellowships were created by Dr. Whitney “Mike” Oates, a Princeton University classics professor who served in the Marine Corps during World War II. During his tour of duty, Professor Oates realized that many of his brightest undergraduates who had served in the armed forces were unlikely to go on to doctoral study and college teaching careers when the war was over. As the G.I. Bill took shape, however, it was clear that college enrollments would expand, and the ranks of qualified college instructors must grow.

Oates and the Princeton graduate dean, Sir Hugh Taylor, developed a program of fellowships funded by various individual donors to help recruit veterans to Princeton’s Ph.D. programs in the humanities. In 1945, these fellowships were combined into one program and named for Woodrow Wilson, a champion of teaching and of graduate studies during his tenure as president of Princeton. The Woodrow Wilson Fellowships provided full funding for Ph.D. studies, with the proviso that recipients plan a career in college teaching.

Other universities and national funders began to recognize the importance of recruiting future college professors. In 1947, Carnegie Corporation of New York provided $100,000 to expand the program to selected universities nationwide. Gradually the program broadened to extend eligibility beyond veterans, in fields other than the humanities. In 1951 the Fellowship program was placed under the administration of the Association of Graduate Schools. In the same year, the first women were granted Woodrow Wilson Fellowships.

In 1953 Robert F. Goheen, who had been one of the first four Woodrow Wilson Fellows in 1945, became national director of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Program, expanding the program to 200 fellowships nationally. Over the next several years, other funders, including the Rockefeller Foundation, also supported the program.

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