How Do I Apply?
See here for the PhD Student Handbook.
Applications are due August 6th by 11:59pm CT.
Application materials are all submitted via the application form. This form includes:
- A number of questions about applicants’ academic interests and experiences
- A place to upload a single document with your answers to the two short essay questions (instructions below)
- A place to upload your Research Interests & Potential Projects Document (instructions below)
- A place to upload your Advisor Agreement Form (see below)
Eligibility
- Have completed first year by the time program begins (August 2025)
- Have PhD advisor/committee approval to apply
Application Materials and Instructions
- Application Form: This form asks a number of questions and is also where applicants will upload their essay responses, Research Interests & Potential Projects document (instructions below), and Advisor Agreement Form (instructions below).
- Short Essay Questions: In the application form, please upload a single document with your responses to the two essay questions below. Please limit your responses to 400 words per question and save the file with your first and last name in the title.
- Question 1: What role do you see storytelling playing in your research, particularly in engaging external stakeholders or sharing findings with broader communities? How might storytelling support your goals of contributing to society through research?
- Question 2: This program is built on a non-hierarchical model where the PhD Student Research Advisor and the undergraduate students on their team co-create the research project together. What are the strengths you see yourself bringing to this environment? What do you see the undergraduate students contributing?
- Research Interests and Potential Projects: In the application form, please upload a 1-2 page write-up including: a) A brief introduction, b) A description of your research interests, and c) 2-3 potential project ideas that you would be interested in developing with an undergraduate research team. You’ll want to write this with undergraduate students as the intended readers (students in the program will be sophomores, juniors, and seniors majoring or minoring in Informatics here in the iSchool).
- See these examples of successful project proposals from a similar program.
- Helpful Tips:
- Because the deliverables for this program are both a scholarly submission to the iConference *and* a public impact deliverable for non-academic stakeholders, we recommend choosing projects that would be interesting/relevant to folks outside of academia (i.e. have implications beyond theory, so some possibilities could be implications for designers, developers, educators, librarians, community organizers, parents, teens, etc.).
- You’re guiding and collaborating with undergraduate students, but you’re setting the parameters. What are the boundaries and what is flexible? Think about the project topics (people, information, and technology) and methods.
- Ex: Let’s say your overarching research areas include mental health, mobile tech, and marginalized populations’ information behavior. You may say you’re flexible in mobile tech type (social media platforms, self-tracking apps, etc.) and user population demographics, but the projects need to stay within the topical bounds of anxiety and depression and use qualitative methods. This ensures that the research aligns with your areas of expertise and goals, AND that your team can have some ownership in shaping the project (students need to be interested in the work to stay engaged for a year!).
- There’s no one “right” way to do this – you’ll see in the linked example how Research Advisors in similar programs navigate this based on their areas of interests and expertise.
- Advisor Agreement Form: Please make a copy of this form and upload a signed version in the application form. To download and print the document, click on the three dots on the upper mid-right hand side and select “download this file.”