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Wentworth Fellowship

Travel Opportunities

 The Wentworth Travel Fellowship, a gift of Mr. Charles F. Green III, was established in 2001 to enable a select number of students to travel to sites, in America or abroad, associated with literary authors and texts.

Each year, students work with faculty sponsors to submit applications detailing journeys inspired by and connected with a specific text, author, or movement in an effort to explore the relationship of artistic production to geographic space.

Most of these trips will take place during holiday break, spring break, or over the summer and must be completed prior to the student's graduation.

In the past, Wentworth Fellows have traveled to places as diverse as Paris, San Francisco, Oxford, Berlin, Prince Edward Island, and Providence, Rhode Island. There are no restrictions (except for those put in place by the State Department) on where a student can go on a Wentworth Travel Fellowship.

Fellowship Details

Who is eligible?

The Wentworth Travel Fellowship is open to English majors and minors in the Literary and Cultural Studies Track, Professional Writing Track, and Teacher Licensure Track, as well as English MA students.

How Do I Apply?

Once you've come up with an idea for a project, download the application and establish contact with an English department faculty member willing to serve as your mentor. Once you've completed the application, submit it to your mentor who will, in turn, finalize and submit the document to the Wentworth committee.

Application Form

The application form is available here to download: Wentworth Application 2024/25

Instructions for Saving the Wentworth Application Form

Do not fill the form out while open in your web browser. Save the empty form to your desktop and open with Adobe Reader or Microsoft Word. Fill it out completely and then save it again for electronic submission.

This document is intended for print purposes. If you need this in another format, please contact Connor Simpson at 910-962-3320 or simpsoncj@uncw.edu.

Important Dates and Deadlines for the 2023-24 Academic Year

table listing and describing important dates and deadlines for the Wentworth Travel Fellowships
Information Session Tuesday, Oct. 15th, 5pm (Location: Morton 101)
Application Deadline Friday, Oct. 25th
Notification of Award Wednesday, Oct. 29th

OIP Education Abroad App*

*This is only for students travelling internationally

 Wednesday, November 1
Spring Poster Showcase TBD

FAQs

The money awarded by the Wentworth Travel Fellowships is intended to cover or help cover the cost of travel and lodging for domestic and international travel. The fellowships can be anywhere between $750 and $2,000, depending on the destination. It is the goal of the committee to award fellowships to as many deserving applicants as possible.

  • Sign up for a 1-hour Directed Independent Study (ENG 491)
  • Write an essay reviewing the journey from a critical and personal perspective, addressing such questions as: How did my experience of this place alter my personal and critical understanding of an author's work? and How did this trip change the way I read other cultural and literary texts?
  • Create and present a poster that will be a part of a public poster session featuring all Wentworth Fellows.
  1. Register for a one-credit DIS with your faculty mentor (as with everything else on this list, if you have questions, schedule an appointment with your mentor to go over the details).
  2. Complete the Office of International Programs’ Education Abroad Application.
  3. If you are traveling abroad, make sure your passport is current. If you don't have a passport, you need to begin the process of applying for one immediately. See the UNCW Passport Acceptance Agency for more information.
  4. Schedule travel (holiday break/spring break/summer) and begin to shop for tickets online or with a travel agent. You will want to shop around for the best deal on tickets. Consider Web sites like Orbitz, Travelocity, Cheaptickets, BookingBuddy, etc.
  5. Finalize your itinerary: Decide precisely where you want to go and where you will stay there before moving on; look online and read about others who have traveled where you are going; get maps, guide books, etc. Make sure that the sights you hope to see are open on the dates you intend to travel.
  6. Start considering other incidentals (these will become significantly less incidental as you travel): good socks, comfortable shoes, and travel clothes.
  7. Don't forget to take a camera and a journal along with you on your journeys (as well as appropriate reading materials).
  8. The Wentworth funds awarded by the committee go through the department and on to financial aid where they finally end up in your student account, generally in one lump sum in January.
  9. All internationally traveling students are required to get travel insurance from the Office of International Programs. See Connor Simpson in the English department office for more information on insurance.

Once you return from your journey, you will present an account of your travels. The documents you need to produce to satisfy the requirements of the fellowship are a poster, an essay, and map materials. The poster will be displayed in the library after the initial poster presentation and will be kept and displayed by the English Department after that. You will need to submit your final Wentworth essay to your faculty mentor in order to receive credit for your DIS.

The Poster

It is the student's responsiblity to follow CSURF's current instructions on poster printing to the letter, including the type of file to submit, and the timing. Instructions to the CSURF site can be found under the Important Link section at the bottom of this page.

Basically, the poster is one large (maximum size: 46"w X 40"h) PowerPoint slide that showcases some well-chosen photos from your trip and intersperses them with text. Posters should be in landscape orientation. There are examples up of previous Wentworth posters in classrooms throughout Morton Hall; please browse for some ideas. While the poster's design is ultimately up to you, here are some things that MUST be on your poster.

Your name, followed by "Wentworth Fellow." Ex: Paul Lynde, Wentworth Fellow

Your project's full title. Ex: "Charles Dickens' London."

  • The UNCW logo
  • Travel dates
  • Photos from your trip (try to get pictures of relevant moments/places in your trip, not just snapshots with friends, flora, and fauna).
  • Information about where you traveled, who/what you were exploring, and some brief conclusions about the connections you found between place and text, traveling and reading.
  • A thank you to Charles F. Green, III.

Remember, you will only get to stand next to your poster and explain your project for a few hours; the poster will remain up in the library and in classrooms for years. Take your time and make it good, so it can speak for itself.

Once you finish designing your poster, you need to send it to CSURF to have it printed in time for the presentation (they need at least two weeks' notice to print posters. It is your responsibility to make sure this gets done).

Make sure to email a digital copy of your poster (as PowerPoint or PDF files) to Rory Laverty, Wentworth Chair (lavertyr@uncw.edu)

The Essay

The essay you write to satisfy your DIS credit should be approximately 1,000 words, describing your trip in detail. In this you need to make clear, not just the outline of your journey, but what brought you there and how being there changed how you understand your particular author/text. Be specific and cite details from both text and trip. Make sure your faculty mentor approves your essay before final submission.

Submitting these materials and requirements are part of the expectations that accompany the fellowship itself.

  • Make sure to upload the complete student application, including your letter of support. The deadline is October 25, 2024.
  • Upload the student’s application as a single file (including your letter of support) to the “Wentworth Applications 2024-25” folder in the English Department’s SharePoint. Be sure to use the following format—student’s last name, student’s first name, Wentworth, academic year—when naming your file, e.g., Smith_John_Wentworth_202425
  • Enroll the student in ENG 491 for 1-credit. If the student is travelling during Spring Break, the student should be enrolled in ENG 491 during that spring semester. If the student is travelling over the summer, the student may enroll in ENG 491 during the Spring semester (prior to travel) or the fall semester (after travel).
  • Ensure the student is aware that Wentworth Fellowship funds are deposited in their student accounts in January 2025
  • Ensure that the student completes the poster session and personal essay prior to submitting a grade for ENG 491.

Important Links


 

Contact Us

All faculty and administrators direct your questions to our committee chair, Rory Laverty.

All students direct your questions to our committee co-chair, Andy Tolhurst.

contacts for wentworth committee

Rory Laverty
Chair of the Wentworth Committee

lavertyr@uncw.edu

Morton Hall 103A

Andy Tolhurst
Co-Chair of the Wentworth Committee

tolhursta@uncw.edu

Morton Hall 121
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