Join the Consortium
The Fellows Program
The Santa Noeta Consortium recruits exceptional graduate researchers, designers, and technologists to work alongside our senior team on FlyForward and other regional initiatives. Fellows don’t observe. They do the work.
What Is a Fellow?
A Consortium Fellow is a graduate student researcher, designer, or technologist who joins the Santa Noeta Consortium for a semester-long engagement. Fellows are assigned to one of our three divisions — Research, Design and Performance Improvement, or Innovations — and work on real projects with real stakes alongside the Consortium’s senior team.
This is not an internship. Fellows bring disciplinary expertise and are expected to exercise professional judgment, defend their decisions, and negotiate their approach with clients, communities, and colleagues. The Consortium has high expectations and low tolerance for work that cannot be explained and justified.
Choose Your Division
Three Tracks. One Mission.
Fellows are assigned to one division based on their graduate program and professional interests. Cross-division collaboration happens regularly; your primary home does not.
Research
For students in educational research, program evaluation, or research methods courses.
You work with Dr. Elena Vance and the SNR team to design and execute research that is honest about what the FlyForward workforce actually needs. You frame problems, choose methods, collect and interpret data, and defend your conclusions to people who will push back.
Design & Performance
For students in instructional design, curriculum development, or performance improvement.
You work with Marc Reyes and the SNDPI team to turn research findings into learning and performance interventions that meet people where they are. You diagnose problems, design solutions, build prototypes, and evaluate whether they work.
Innovations
For students in educational technology, emerging media, or AI-mediated learning.
You work with Chloe Chen and the SNI team to evaluate, prototype, and govern the technology layer of the FlyForward retraining initiative. You choose tools, build systems, audit them for bias and accessibility, and govern what you deploy.
What Fellows Do
Each week, the Consortium issues a project brief — a real problem from the FlyForward initiative that requires a research, design, or technology response. Fellows work individually and in teams to respond to that brief, make and defend decisions, and produce deliverables that the Consortium could actually use.
Over the course of a semester, Fellows progress through three phases:
Learn the environment, the clients, and the problem. Build your presence and credibility inside the Consortium.
Take on increasingly complex decisions. Negotiate your approach with NPCs, teammates, and community stakeholders.
Bring your own project to the Consortium. Defend it unaided. Take responsibility for what you designed.
What Fellows Are Expected to Do on Their Own
Regardless of division, every Fellow is expected to make certain decisions unaided — without deferring to an AI tool, a template, or a peer’s judgment. These are the core professional competencies the Consortium is built to develop, and they are assessed through direct demonstration:
- Research Fellows: frame the research problem; choose and justify the design; make the ethical call on human subjects; interpret data and draw warranted conclusions.
- Design Fellows: diagnose the performance gap; set learning objectives; make and justify core design decisions; evaluate whether the solution worked.
- Innovations Fellows: judge whether a tool fits the problem; make the ethics and accessibility call; justify the design with theory; evaluate the prototype.
These cannot be outsourced. The Consortium uses AI tools, and Fellows are expected to use them well. But the professional judgment underlying every decision is the Fellow’s.
Ready to Apply?
Current openings are posted each semester. If you are enrolled in a Consortium-affiliated graduate program, your faculty will provide access to the application portal. If you are not sure whether your program qualifies, contact your instructor.
The Consortium does not accept unsolicited applications. All Fellows are enrolled in affiliated graduate programs.