Phase 2 Application Preparation
Applicants selected as finalists will be invited to participate in a second stage of review. While Phase 1 focuses primarily on identifying promising Newcombe projects, Phase 2 allows reviewers to examine those projects in greater depth and to compare them with other outstanding finalists.
The purpose of Phase 2 is not to revisit the same questions asked during the initial review. Rather, it provides an opportunity for a more detailed assessment of both the scholarship and the scholar. Finalists are asked to submit additional materials that help reviewers evaluate the originality of the project, the strength of its scholarly foundations, the applicant’s preparation to complete the work successfully, and the potential contributions the project may make to ongoing scholarly and public conversations.
Phase 2 materials build upon the work already completed in the initial application. The project itself does not change. Instead, finalists are given an opportunity to explain, develop, and contextualize that work in greater depth.
The sections that follow describe the additional materials requested from finalists and explain the purpose each serves within the final review process.
Full Proposal
Purpose of This Section:
To allow reviewers to evaluate the scholarly foundations, originality, argument, and significance of the dissertation in greater depth than is possible through the Project Summary.
What Reviewers Are Trying to Learn:
Whether the dissertation demonstrates strong scholarship, a compelling intellectual contribution, a persuasive framework, and the potential to make a meaningful contribution to its field.
The Full Proposal serves a different purpose than the Project Summary submitted during Phase 1. While the Project Summary is designed to help reviewers understand the project, the Proposal allows reviewers to evaluate the scholarship that supports it.
Applicants sometimes assume that the Proposal is simply a longer version of the Project Summary. In practice, the two documents perform different functions. The Project Summary answers a relatively straightforward question: What is this dissertation about? The Proposal addresses a more demanding set of questions: Why does this project matter? How does it engage existing scholarship? What contribution does it seek to make? Why should reviewers find its arguments persuasive and worthy of support?
A strong proposal situates the dissertation within the relevant scholarly literature, explains the project’s intervention, demonstrates command of the field, and provides a clear account of the project’s methods, evidence, and argument. While reviewers are not expecting a completed book manuscript, they are looking for evidence of rigorous thinking, scholarly maturity, and intellectual originality.
One useful way to think about the distinction is this: the Project Summary explains the project; the Proposal demonstrates the scholarship. By the time reviewers read the Proposal, they already understand what the dissertation is about. The Proposal provides an opportunity to show how the project works as a piece of scholarship and why it deserves serious consideration among an exceptionally strong group of finalists.
Intellectual Commitments
By the time reviewers reach this section, they already understand the dissertation project and have determined that it warrants serious consideration. This section provides an opportunity to reflect on the intellectual life from which the project emerged.
This section invites applicants to reflect on the relationship between themselves and their work. Reviewers already understand what the dissertation studies. Here, they are trying to understand why the questions at the center of the dissertation have become important to the applicant.
The application asks about the commitments, experiences, questions, and concerns that have shaped your intellectual life and drawn you to this work. These influences may emerge from many sources. They may arise from previous research, teaching, professional experiences, intellectual traditions, personal encounters with particular questions, or longstanding concerns that have shaped the direction of your inquiry. The goal is to illuminate the relationship between the scholar and the scholarship. Why have these questions become worthy of sustained attention? What concerns, commitments, curiosities, or experiences have made them intellectually compelling?
Strong responses are reflective, focused, and intellectually honest rather than exhaustive. They help reviewers understand how a particular line of inquiry emerged and why it has remained significant without attempting to recount an entire personal or academic history.
The strongest statements often reveal not certainty, but sustained engagement. They help reviewers understand not only what questions an applicant studies, but why those questions continue to matter.
By the end of this section, reviewers should have a clearer understanding of why the applicant has chosen to devote years of study to these particular questions and how those questions have shaped the intellectual work that followed.
Future Contributions
This section invites applicants to reflect on the future implications of their work. Reviewers are not asking applicants to predict the impact of their scholarship or to make ambitious claims about how the dissertation will transform a field, profession, community, or society. Rather, they are interested in understanding the contributions applicants hope their work might make over time.
Contributions can take many forms. For some applicants, the most immediate contribution may be to a scholarly conversation within a particular discipline. For others, the work may inform professional practice, public understanding, institutional decision-making, community life, or broader conversations about religion, ethics, values, and public life. There is no single model of contribution that is preferred.
Applicants should focus on thoughtful possibilities rather than confident predictions. The strongest responses demonstrate an awareness of how the dissertation fits within larger intellectual, professional, or public conversations while remaining realistic about the limits of any single project.
This section is not asking applicants to defend the significance of the dissertation once again. Rather, it is asking them to reflect on where the work may lead and what kinds of contributions they hope it will make. The emphasis is on aspiration, direction, and possibility rather than certainty.
By the end of this section, reviewers should have a clearer sense of how the applicant imagines carrying the questions explored in the dissertation into future scholarly, professional, or public work.
Full Recommendation Letters
Unlike the brief recommendation rubric used during Phase 1, the recommendation letters requested during Phase 2 provide reviewers with a more comprehensive perspective on both the scholar and the scholarship.
Strong recommendation letters do more than praise an applicant’s intelligence, diligence, or professionalism. They help reviewers understand the significance of the dissertation, the originality of the applicant’s contribution, the applicant’s strengths as a researcher and writer, and the applicant’s readiness to complete the proposed work successfully.
Detailed, specific letters from individuals familiar with the project are generally more useful than letters from prominent scholars who have had only limited engagement with the applicant’s work.
Reviewers understand that recommendation letters reflect the perspectives of individual scholars and disciplinary contexts. They are not looking for particular phrases, rankings, or formulas. Rather, they are interested in thoughtful evaluations that help illuminate the strengths of the project and the scholar behind it.
By the time reviewers read these letters, they have already determined that the dissertation warrants serious consideration. The recommendation letters help provide the additional context needed to distinguish among an exceptionally strong group of finalists.
Optional Guidance for Communicating with Recommenders, Phase 2
Applicants may find it helpful to discuss the possibility of a Phase 2 recommendation letter with their recommenders well before finalist notifications are announced. While there is no expectation that recommenders begin drafting letters in advance, providing early notice can help ensure that they are familiar with the process and prepared should the applicant advance to the finalist stage.
Below you will find sample language that may be adapted into your own words when contacting a recommender.
Suggested Email Language
I wanted to let you know that if I am selected as a finalist for the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, finalists are required to submit full letters of recommendation as part of the Phase 2 review process, and the deadline would be February 14.
At this stage, no action is required. However, because the finalist review period occurs on a relatively short timeline, I wanted to provide advance notice and ask whether you would be willing to support my application should I advance to the finalist stage.
The Newcombe Fellowship supports dissertations that engage significant questions related to religion, ethics, morals, and values. If selected as a finalist, I would provide the proposal, application materials, and any additional information that might be helpful.
Thank you for your consideration and for your continued support of my work.