Publication: A Princeton Companion
Wilson, Woodrow, Fellowship Program, The, a nationwide search for college teaching talent, grew out of a pioneering effort begun at Princeton at the end of the Second World War. The idea, as conceived by Professor Whitney J. Oates, was to help renew the normal flow of graduate students, which had dried up during the war, by inviting ex-servicemen who were thought to have gifts for teaching to try out a year of graduate study. One of the first invited was Robert F. Goheen '40, who later became president of the University. Fellowship funds to complement G.I. benefits were provided initially by Miss Isabelle Kemp of New York City, Randolph Compton '15, Donald Mixsell '15, and William D. Sherrerd, Jr. '25. These were supplemented by appropriations from the University's general funds and in 1947 by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of America. Professor Oates and Professor George A. Graham were coadministrators of the program.
The University's program was found to have a continuing value that went beyond the immediate needs of the postwar period, and in 1951 it was taken over by the Association of Graduate Schools (a component of the Association of American Universities) and considerably expanded. Among those who served as national director under the guidance of Dean Hugh S. Taylor, then chairman of the Fellowship Committee of the Association of Graduate Schools, were Princeton Professors Courtney C. Smith and Robert Goheen. The fellowships awarded under the enlarged program were underwritten by the thirty-seven universities which comprised the Association of American Universities and by grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the General Education Board.
Not all Woodrow Wilson Fellows became teachers. Ralph Nader '55, for example, went on to become a crusader for consumer interests and other aspects of public welfare.
In 1958 a separate organization, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, was established with Dean Taylor as President and his eventual successor Hans Rosenhaupt, formerly of Columbia University, as national director. For ten years thereafter Ford Foundation grants totaling $52 million permitted the Wilson Fellowship Foundation to disburse $5 million annually: $3 million in stipends for Fellows, $2 million in grants for graduate schools chosen by the Fellows. Before 1958 about 200 fellowships were awarded annually. In the last year of substantial Ford Foundation support almost a thousand were awarded.
Massive Ford Foundation support ceased in 1967. Between 1968 and 1971, the Wilson Fellowship Foundation continued to identify good candidates for graduate schools even though it was able to provide financial support for only about 150 of them each year.
Thereafter, although fellowships for first-year graduate students were no longer offered, the Foundation continued to conduct a variety of programs concerned with the recruitment and placement of graduate students.
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).