INSTRUCTIONS FOR STUDENTS ASKING ME FOR LETTERS OF EVALUATION

If you are going to ask me for a letter of evaluation (I will not necessarily recommend you) for medical school, graduate school, summer programs, scholarships, study abroad or anything else that will require written comments please do the following for me:

• Think about what kind of an evaluation you will be getting from me. How well did you do in my class? How well do I know you outside of class? Am I aware of your career goals? In short, am I the best person you can get to evaluate you?
• Send me an email (or Word document attached to an email) which has the contact name and address left justified and Times New Roman 12 pt font. I simply copy and paste this information into the letter and I would prefer not to have to type it in myself. It is also useful to give me a link to the website for that program. If it is something at Centre College (like study abroad) or medical school you do not have to do this.
• Indicate the deadline clearly.
• If you are applying to multiple programs, for instance multiple REU's for the summer, please send me an email (or document attached to an email) which has ALL of the places to which you are applying. You can update and re-send this document periodically, but I do not want to have to hunt through my email inbox finding all of your requests since I will certainly miss one.
• Sometimes there are forms which you have to fill out which ask for my information (do this for me!):
  • Name = Joe Workman
  • Title = Professor of Chemistry
  • Address = 600 W. Walnut St., Danville, KY 40422
  • Phone = 859-238-5415
  • Email = joe.workman@centre.edu
• Be sure that you fill out the confidentiality agreement (I recommend that you waive your right of access) and sign any forms so that I don't have to track you down later to do it.
• Send me a current resume or list of activities that are pertinent to the program or school for which I am evaluating you.
• Send me any essays you are writing for the program or school so that I can better understand your motivations.
• Make sure that anything you send me about yourself has your name in the file name. Do not send me a file that's called RESUME or SUMMER PROGRAMS because I won't know whom they belong to once I save them on my computer.
• I usually need at least two weeks lead time to write a new letter for someone. If I have already written a letter for you, it is very easy to do another one unless the two programs are completely unrelated (like study abroad and summer REU). It is your responsibility to check with the programs to make sure that they have gotten my letter.
• If the letter needs to be sent via snail mail, please provide me with an envelope with the printed (by computer is best) address. Do NOT provide stamps! I can give you college envelopes to print the address on since that looks better.

Here's an example of what I want if you need letters for multiple programs. The student who constructed this was organizing things for himself as well as for me. Note how he indicated that forms were required for the letter for one program and another had an email which indicated how to submit the letter via an online form.

University of Washington in St. Louis
Two letters with forms and official transcript due January 31 (Dr. Workman and Dr. Sliva)
Washington University
BiomedRAP Admissions
Campus Box 8226
660 S. Euclid Avenue
St. Louis , Missouri 63110
http://biomedrap.wustl.edu/

Clarian – Indianapolis
Two letters (online form email contact), official transcript due Feb 15 (Dr. Workman and Dr. McAllister)
Karen Spear
Summer Student Research Program
Methodist Research Institute
Clarian Health Partners
1701 N. Senate Blvd.
Indianapolis IN, 46202
$4600, May 22 – Aug 11
http://www.clarian.org/portal/patients/education?clarianContentID=/education/mri/summer_student.xml