Eligibility

To be eligible for a TRI Endowment Fellowship, 

Students must be:

  • Master's or Doctoral students at the Yale School of the Environment or a joint program with YSE,
  • or Yale College undergraduates with prior approval from an academic advisor
  • Enrolled at the time of application and for at least one semester following the fellowship period

Proposed projects must be:

  • Independent research (primarily student-directed and incorporate original data)
  • Located in a tropical country (some or all of its borders falling between 23.4 degrees North and South latitude)
  • 8–12 weeks in length
  • Coordinated with a local in-country partner (see existing TRI partnerships)

  • Approved by a YSE faculty member/advisor

Projects will not be considered that do not meet these minimum requirements.

Ensure that you can obtain any visas, research permits, etc in time for your fieldwork.

Research Ethics

Research should not increase risk or cause harm to participants (human or animal). Any research (i.e., not journalism or oral histories) that plans to undertake interactions or interventions with human subjects (surveys/focus groups/behavior modification) or that plans to gather identifiable private information, or that is working with animals, must be approved or exempted by one of Yale’s research ethics committees.

Research on Humans:
  • By the start of the SPRING semester, prospective applicants should also be working to obtain Human Subjects Committee approval, or waivers, for their research from the Institutional Review Board. See the following two pages for more information: Getting Started and IRES-IRB.
  • The Yale Center for International and Professional Experience has a good overview.
  • Ensure that you read the Human Subjects Committee Review of Student Projects document carefully!
  • For more info, contact Cheryl Danton, M.H.S., CIP, Regulatory Analyst: cheryl.danton@yale.edu or 203-785-6438.
Research on Animals:

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Additional Considerations:

  • Applications from previous Fellows will be considered with priority given to first-time applicants.
  • Applicants must demonstrate language competency for international research. Proposals by students without such competency are usually unsuccessful. Any necessary language course work, especially by Master’s students, must typically start in the FALL semester of their first year.
  • Undergraduate applicants may be subject to travel restrictions for security reasons. See the Yale CIPE Travel Policy.
  • Course selection during this same FALL semester should be designed insofar as curriculum guidelines permit to focus on courses that will give the student the necessary theoretical and conceptual underpinnings to write coherent, focused, topical research proposals by early in the SPRING semester.
  • Applicants are expected to apply for matching funds from other sources at Yale and will be marked down if they do not. A list of some funding sources is available on the Other Funding Opportunities page as well as in the Students Grant Database.

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Please contact the TRI office with any further questions regarding eligibility.