Chase Center partners with Reagan Institute to support early career scholars

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Chase Center partners with Reagan Institute to support early career scholars

New program offers resources and mentorship to foundational scholarship

The Ohio State University has partnered with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute to help launch the Reagan Institute Society of Fellows, a multiyear fellowship that provides a new pathway to the tenure track for early career scholars.

Ohio State, through the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, is a founding partner with four other institutions, including Dartmouth College, George Washington University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Vanderbilt University.

"This partnership offers an exciting opportunity for scholars at a foundational point in their career as they pursue early research and discovery," said Ohio State's Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Trevor Brown. "Ohio State and the Chase Center look forward to working with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute to support our early career scholars."

"This fellowship program focuses on fields of study that are critical to our civic life. The Chase Center will be a welcome home for new Reagan Institute Society of Fellows at Ohio State," said Chase Center Executive Director Lee Strang. "This program provides both resources and, just as importantly, the valuable mentorship that young scholars need as they begin the next step in their academic career."

The society gives scholars time and support to finish their first major work. Eligible scholars are focused on U.S. political history, America in the world, civic thought, science and technology studies, and law and economics. Applicants from any accredited doctoral program are eligible.

Fellows are selected by a committee of faculty representatives from each partner university, based on scholarly merit and a commitment to research that enriches intellectual diversity in their field.

"The academy loses too many of its most promising minds in the years immediately following the PhD. Not for lack of talent or ambition, but because the time and resources needed to complete serious scholarship are increasingly difficult to secure," said Anthony Eames, the Jill Kent Chair in History, Civics, and Statecraft at the Ronald Reagan Institute. "This program offers a well-funded, structured path from dissertation to faculty appointment."

The program includes two fellowship tracks:

• Five-Year Fellowship Appointment: Fellows are recent PhDs who will spend two years in residence at the Reagan Institute in Washington, D.C., with a stipend and research funds to complete a first book or major project. They build relationships across the capital's research and policy community. Fellows then serve a three-year faculty appointment at a partner university, taking part in the life of their host department.
• Three-Year Graduate Fellowship Appointment: Graduate Fellows are doctoral candidates in their final year who spend one year in residence at the Reagan Institute completing their dissertation, followed by a two-year postdoctoral appointment at a partner university.

"President Reagan believed America's dynamism depended on the vigorous competition of ideas," said Roger Zakheim, Washington director of the institute. "The Society of Fellows invests in this competition by providing opportunities for a rising generation of scholars to refine their ideas within and beyond the university. We are proud to partner with seven institutions that share our conviction that the pursuit of intellectual pluralism makes universities better for scholars and students alike."

The society will also appoint senior fellows from partner institutions who will serve as mentors to early fellows and graduate fellows. The society will further support graduate students with opportunities for research grants throughout their early careers.

Fellows receive an $80,000 annual salary during their two-year Washington residency and a $90,000 minimum annual salary during the three-year university appointment.

Graduate fellows receive a $60,000 annual salary during their one-year Washington residency and a $75,000 minimum annual salary during their two-year university appointment.

The society is now accepting applications for its inaugural cohort of fellows, with appointments beginning on Sept. 1, 2027. Interested scholars can learn more about the fellow application here and the graduate fellow application here.

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