Summers Promises Summer Grants

University President Lawrence H. Summers told prefrosh that the refusal of some students’ applications for summer research travel grants “shouldn’t have happened” and assured students that the gap will be resolved this year.

At a question-and-answer session in the Science Center on Saturday morning, a concerned prefrosh queried the president about a report Friday that some students’ applications for summer research abroad were turned down due to heavier competition.

Summers said he was disappointed to read the news in The Crimson, because he had been assured that adequate funding was in place.

“I was more than a little bit unhappy to see that,” said the president, who was a strong proponent of international student experience during his short tenure. “We will succeed in fixing that for this year.”

Summers added that he was “a little embarrassed” by the flub. But it was not immediately clear what his assurances mean for the international research centers that allocate grants to students.

Melissa H. Wojciechowski, the student programs and events coordinator for the Center for International Development (CID), said yesterday that she had not heard about Summers’ remarks and could not comment this weekend.

The CID received six times more applications than it could fund this year, according to an e-mail sent to students who were denied funding.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs also saw an uptick in applications this year; about two-thirds of its applicants must look elsewhere for funding.

But not all of the funding sources for travel grants received more applications this year.

Martha H. Homer, director of student employment for the sizable Harvard College Research Program (HCRP), wrote in an e-mail that the number of applications for HCRP grants “appears to be similar to last year.”

HCRP has yet to allocate its grants, typically awarded to about 400 students each year.

“There is more funding available this summer than ever before for students planning research abroad,” Homer wrote in the e-mail.

She attributed the increases elsewhere to students’ applications to multiple programs—facilitated this year by a new common application form—rather than to a growth in the total number of students applying.

—Staff writer Nicholas M. Ciarelli can be reached at ciarelli@fas.harvard.edu.