Distinguished Student Scholarship Collection Policies and Information

The Purpose of the Collection

The Distinguished Student Scholarship Collection (“DSSC”) showcases and makes available exceptional, unique, and original coursework of Franklin University's students.

Faculty can learn more about the DSSC from our Faculty Information Sheet.

Content of the Collection

All works posted to FUSE will be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative license (CC BY-NC-ND).

Once works are posted in FUSE, no changes or revisions to the work will be permitted unless Library/FUSE staff determines that removal is necessary due to copyright infringement, plagiarism or because the work improperly contains personally identifiable information about an individual.

Submission Guidelines & Process

Eligible Works


Works Included
Franklin University undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students* whose work has been nominated by a Franklin faculty/staff member and passes the review process are eligible for inclusion in the Distinguished Student Scholarship Collection. Students whose works are nominated must be enrolled in Franklin University during the term their work is nominated. Students must give FUSE permission to post their works, and work with library / FUSE staff to meet submission requirements, for such works to be added to the DSCC.
*Doctoral student work should be separate from the dissertation (doctoral students will submit their dissertation at the end of their defense through a separate process that is not part of the Distinguished Student Scholarship collection).

Scope of Content

  • Content can be scholarly or research-related, but must reflect disciplines and subject areas relevant to University programs and scholarship.
  • Content must be unique, original coursework that does not reveal any proprietary information (whether from Franklin courses or third-party entities).
  • Works reflecting a specific assigned topic which will be repeated in a course should not be included to avoid issues with future assignments in the course.
  • Content must be a completed work.
  • Contributors must be willing and able to grant the University the non-exclusive rights to both preserve and make their work available through FUSE and to make their work available under the CC BY-NC-ND license.
  • Content must be submitted in a Word or PDF format that follows the guidelines for submitted documents.
  • The creator of the work must be the sole rights holder for the work or, if a work has multiple creators, permission must be provided by all co-authors for the work to be included.
  • Works must be nominated by a faculty/staff member and approved by the review process.

Supported Content Types
The following content types are among those that may be accepted for inclusion in the DSCC:

  • research papers,
  • projects, or
  • posters
Papers, projects, or posters must be original work done within the scope of a student’s coursework. Students should select their own topic for the work, rather than responding to an assigned topic.
This is a non-exhaustive list. Nominations are welcome for coursework not covered in this list. However, FUSE staff may determine that this work does not meet with guidelines for publication to FUSE. Please contact library / FUSE staff with any questions.

Submission process

Faculty/staff may nominate student work for inclusion in the DSCC by using the submission form provided by the library.
To nominate a work for the DSCC, faculty/staff must provide:

  • A brief description of the work.
  • An explanation of why they believe the work is an exceptional, unique and original work which should be included in the Distinguished Student Scholarship collection.
  • Responses to a mini-rubric on the submission form demonstrating that the work meets the initial consideration criteria.
  • A copy of the work in Word or PDF format.
Works can be nominated for FUSE using the DSSC Nomination form.

Student responsibilities if selected

For student works which are selected for the Distinguished Student Scholarship Collection to be added to the collection, the student who created the work must provide the following:

  • A completed submission through FUSE which authorizes the library to post their work on FUSE and make it available under a CC BY-NC-ND license.
  • Any assistance requested by library / FUSE staff to ensure accessibility requirements are met.

Students may be provided the opportunity to update the title of their work and provide an abstract / keywords if they desire, but will not be required to do so.

Submissions are accepted any time. Submissions which meet the initial requirements will be sent out for review during the subsequent term. When a submission is received, library / FUSE staff will conduct an initial review of the submission to make sure the application is complete and meets general scope and standards of the collection. An email will be sent confirming receipt of the submission, or indicating what issue(s) need resolved for the submission to be valid.

Faculty Review

All works which meet the initial submission requirements will be vetted by two faculty reviewers randomly selected from a pool of volunteer full-time faculty. Reviewers will use a rubric to determine whether student work meets the standards for inclusion in the Distinguished Student Scholarship Collection. To merit inclusion in the collection, both reviewers must score the submission as “exemplary” in at least 3 of the 4 categories on the rubric, and no lower than “proficient” in the 4th category. Submissions may be rejected if questions about academic integrity exist.

If both reviewers agree on whether the submission should (or should not) be included in the collection, that will be the final result. If the reviewers disagree, the submission will be sent to a faculty member who has been designated to act as a tie-breaker.

Faculty interested in acting as faculty reviewers can fill out the DSSC Volunteer Faculty Reviewer form.

Library/FUSE Responsibilities

Initial Submissions

Library/FUSE staff will compile submissions to the DSSC and make sure that the mini-rubric and explanation, as well as the required metadata, support potential inclusion of the submitted work to the DSSC.

For works that pass the initial threshold, library / FUSE staff will send the students an email notifying them of the nomination.

Faculty Review

Library / FUSE staff will compile all submissions made during a term. At the beginning of the following term, library / FUSE staff will prepare the submissions for review by faculty and send the submission/rubric (or links) to reviewing faculty.

Library / FUSE staff will check the rubrics to see whether there is a final result or whether a tie-breaker is necessary (and send the work to the tie-breaking faculty for determination).

Final Result

Once the reviewers have decided whether a work merits inclusion in the DSSC, library / FUSE staff will notify faculty nominators of the decision. If the decision was that the work merits inclusion in the collection, library / FUSE staff will notify the student and work with them to finalize the contribution and post the work on FUSE. Library / FUSE staff will work with the student to ensure compliance with the University’s Digital Accessibility Standards to the greatest extend feasible, and send the student a link through FUSE to authorize posting the work in FUSE under a CC BY-NC-ND license.