Undergraduate Global Scholars

Application Deadline: September 14, 2025

Application Timeframe: Fall

A Global Scholar talks with their hands to another student, standing alongside a final art project.

Undergraduate Global Scholars are student leaders in the campus community. Join our next cohort of students to contribute to the campus conversation on the future of international aid.

This competitive fellowship program is open to students from all colleges and majors with a passion for big global questions and speaking across differences. We will provide a toolkit of resources for weighing challenging questions as you build your practical skills in global public discourse.

Your unique skills—whether you are a writer, scholar, activist, artist, poet, or hands-on practitioner—play an important role in imagining the future. By the end of the program, you'll be an active global citizen and champion for social impact.

Is (Cutting) International Aid Good?

Two masked men stand over boxes of vaccines.

The work of this year's Global Scholars contributes to the Einaudi Center's 2025–26 theme: Is (Cutting) International Aid Good?

Large cuts to U.S. foreign aid threaten global health, education, people who are migrating, peace and stability, the environment, democratic governance, food security, and more. As the landscape of international aid evolves, the world faces new questions about the impact of aid on communities, what makes international aid effective, and how to move forward.

Our Global Scholars will grapple with these questions in their capstone projects, considering the multiple perspectives that shape the global landscape of international aid and the communities impacted.

What You'll Learn

The Einaudi Center creates a space for studying and practicing how individuals and communities can engage about, with, and across difference and disagreement to work toward collective understanding and action on challenging global issues. Our focus will be on skills of discourse, empowering you to thoughtfully address big questions on campus and beyond. You will learn how to:

Analyze complex global issues.
Understand issues from multiple perspectives.
Test your ideas through research.
Respectfully interact with communities impacted by an issue.
Responsibly engage in advocacy.
Craft and share a capstone project with the campus community.

Obioha Chijioke speaks to a small group while pointing toward a presentation slide. — “Being an Undergraduate Global Scholar this semester was all about learning,” said Obioha Chijioke '24. “We were able to learn about the research and writing process from professors and published authors, but also about how to cocreate with people we may also happen to be researching and writing about.”

Mentors and Networking

As a Global Scholar, you'll meet and engage with prominent experts and leaders visiting the Einaudi Center, including this year's speakers at the Bartels World Affairs Lecture and Lund Critical Debate.

You'll attend participatory workshops led by our Einaudi Center practitioner in residence Paul Kaiser and faculty mentors—who are expert researchers and practitioners on international development. You'll also help plan and contribute to a campus showcase about the future of international aid.