How to establish a fellowship program?

[karthik]

We are looking to competitive recruit 4/5 fellows for each year of the institute. Each fellow will be chosen for a proposed project that supports one of the areas of URSSI (such as community, education, policy etc). Are there best practices to make such a program work successfully?

• How much financial support do we provide? Do we go with the SSI approach and provide a small, modest travel budget and host them at collaborations workshops or do we provide them with some time buyout (say 1 day a week for a year)?
• How do we assess success?
• Who would mentor (a staff person, who acts as the coordinator of the program plus a faculty mentor)?

[karthik]

Added some general thoughts. Can be fleshed out more.