This is an awesome new grant opportunity for students who work in photography or digital media, so all Professional & New Media Writing students, this one’s for you!

About the IA/JGS FELLOWS PROGRAM
Thanks to a generous grant from the Joy of Giving Something Foundation (JGS), Imagining America (IA) invites publicly engaged students of photography or digital media from our member institutions to apply for a tuition award and to join a national working group of students.

IA is a national network of publicly engaged scholars, artists, designers, students, and community members working toward the democratic transformation of higher education and civic life. The goal of the IA/JGS Fellows Program is to elevate photography and digital media as a pathway for students to pursue their careers and make a difference in their communities.

The 2016-17 JGS Fellows will receive tuition scholarships of $2,000 each and will commit to engaging in a yearlong learning exchange that will result in a collaborative media project. Fellows will be invited to participate in the 2016 IA National Conference, October 6-8, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and will be eligible for a limited number of travel stipends to attend the conference.

Criteria includes:

• Financial need
• Artistic merit
• Quality of community-engaged practice (for example, students with demonstrated leadership facilitating community-based photo or media arts experiences with people unlikely to otherwise have access to art-making)

To be considered, we ask the student to contribute three work samples and write an essay (please see prompt below), and to have a faculty or staff member email a letter of recommendation with information about the student’s financial need to connect@imaginingamerica.org. The submission deadline is May 16, 2016. Only one award will be given per school.

Fellows will be announced in July and the funds will be released shortly thereafter. Checks will be distributed to each IA institution, and the faculty or staff nominator will be responsible for seeing that the winning student receives the scholarship funds.