Caldwell Fellows

The Alumni Association supports the Caldwell Fellows through scholarship endowments and program support.

The Caldwell Fellows program fills the unique niche of identifying and developing a highly promising and widely diverse group of students for service-based leadership. Great minds and open hearts, plus a talent for leadership and creative problem solving, are marks of those selected to be Caldwell Fellows.

Through a rigorous selection process each spring, new Fellows are selected from the freshman class that entered NC State the previous fall (or first-year students with less than 30 credit hours at NC State).

“You just don’t know how magnificent you might be. Think big.”

— John Tyler Caldwell, NC State Chancellor (1959-1975).

Fellows receive a financial award that includes a tuition stipend, along with annual enrichment stipends for experiences in cross-cultural immersion and service, global leadership development, individual and professional development, and social entrepreneurship.

Key features of the experience include:

• A diverse and highly engaged learning community, which meets regularly through monthly dinner seminars, class retreats and shared service-learning endeavors.
• A three-hour honors-credit leadership seminar for sophomores.
• Service-learning teams that engage each fellow in ongoing work with community partner agencies.
• Intensive, individualized leadership and life coaching with a team of Triangle-area executive coaches.
• Roles of responsibility that allow students to develop applied leadership skills.
• Campus service ventures, created and maintained by Caldwell Fellows, including WE Recycle, NC State’s recycling program at Carter-Finley football games; SATELLITE, a five-day science and technology camp for N.C. high schoolers; and the Campus Farmers Market.
• Capstone leadership training at the Center for Creative Leadership.
• Outward Bound model 10-day Wilderness Expedition.
• Annual international service-learning excursions.
• Meaningful engagement with program alumni through networking, internships and an annual Alumni/Fellows Gala.