Stanford Undergraduate Fellows Program

What is it?

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The Zephyr Institute’s Stanford Undergraduate Fellows Program is a seminar series for Stanford undergraduates addressing a range of themes in the humanities, including literature, history, philosophy, and politics. The Fellowship provides curious and motivated students with an opportunity to examine life’s big questions outside the structure of the university classroom.

Throughout the year, undergraduate fellows participate in several rigorous instructor-led seminars. In addition, they have the option to participate in intellectually and aesthetically enriching cultural outings sponsored by Zephyr and to participate in a 1 day-long intellectual retreat with a senior scholar.

By working through challenging texts and ideas together, the fellows build intellectual community, enlarge their faculties by the disinterested pursuit of truth and the experience of beauty, and live more reflective and examined lives. The Undergraduate Fellows Program also fosters lifelong habits of learning, providing fellows with opportunities to continue their intellectual pursuits even after they graduate. Upon completing the program, undergraduate fellows join the wider Zephyr intellectual community. They are invited to participate in special lectures, conferences, and masterclasses.

Admission is competitive. Seminars are held roughly every other week, for a total of five meetings per term, include dinner, and run to about two hours. The intellectual retreat for each term is held on a Saturday late in the term and lasts all day. Readings for each seminar (generally a short essay or excerpt taken from a longer work), range from ten to thirty pages. For the intellectual retreats, the readings run to a length of no more than roughly one hundred pages. The total out-of-seminar time commitment students give over to the fellowship will not exceed twelve hours per term. 

Students who are admitted and accept the fellowship commit themselves only to participating in the term immediately following their admission. Students who are fellows in the Fall will have the option, but not the obligation, to continue with the fellowship in the Winter and Spring terms.

For questions about the fellowship, please contact Landon Hobbs (lhobbs@zephyr.org).