Faculty Fellowship Proposal Consultants

Since 1993 the Graduate Division has provided a service that assists students in preparing extramural fellowship proposals. The service is available to UCLA graduate students, senior undergraduate students who intend to apply to graduate school, and postdoctoral scholars.

The program is designed to provide experienced professional assistance to encourage the submission and facilitate the success of individual proposals for graduate and postdoctoral fellowships offered by a variety of agencies including the following: National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Social Sciences Research Council, and Fulbright Fellowship Programs. The awards provided by these agencies are merit-based, competitive, and often devised for multi-year study programs. Successful endeavors are prestigious and widely recognized as indicators of scholarly potential and accomplishment.

The faculty consultants and their general areas of expertise are Professor Arnold Band (humanities, arts and social sciences) and Professor Charles Olmstead (physical, life and social sciences).

The program consultants assist each student in planning and preparing the proposal. Their services are designed to supplement, not replace, the necessary guidance of a faculty mentor. They provide critical feedback for the refinement of proposals, suggestions for access to all available scholarly resources relevant to the preparation of proposals, and electronic templates to complete the computer-assisted production of the proposal document.

All eligible students & scholars at UCLA are encouraged to utilize this valuable service at their earliest possible opportunity.

Arnold Band (humanities, arts and social sciences)

Arnold Band earned his BA in Classics and the PhD in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He has also studied at the Hebrew University, in Jerusalem, and at the University of Paris. His research focuses on the relationship between texts and historical contexts in Jewish Literature of all periods, and specifically in modern Hebrew literature. He has published a lengthy study on the Hebrew author S.Y. Agnon entitled Nostalgia and Nightmare, an annotated volume of translations of the Hasidic Tales of Nahman of Braslav, and many articles on a variety of other topics, such as Kafka, Bialik, The Book of Jonah, Semantic Rhyme in Hebrew Prosody, modern Israeli fiction and poetry.

Dr. Band founded the UCLA Comparative Literature Program in 1969 and was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1981. He has received both a National Endowment of Humanities Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was the founding director of UCLA's Jewish Studies Center from 1994 to 1996.

To make appointments with Professor Band please call (310) 825-4355 or e-mail him at band@humnet.ucla.edu.

Chuck Olmstead (physical, life, and social sciences)

Chuck Olmstead earned the PhD in Physiological Psychology from the University of Virginia in 1973. Following postdoctoral and staff research appointments at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, he served as a member of the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the UCLA School of Medicine and as a member of the UCLA Mental Retardation Research Center from 1981-1989. He currently holds an appointment as a visiting professor in the Division of Neurosurgery, where his research focuses on perinatal hydrocephalus and childhood epilepsy.

Dr. Olmstead has extensive experience in the training of undergraduate, dental and medical students. He continues his long-standing participation in the successful Developmental Disabilities Immersion Program and the Minority Summer Research Program at UCLA. His research interests are in the behavioral, physiological and anatomical sequelae of developmental brain damage.

To make appointments with Professor Olmstead please call (310) 825-5094 or e-mail him at brainone@ucla.edu.