The Graduate School will hold a reception on Monday, September 18 to recognize the inaugural recipients of the Graduate Dean's Fellowship, an elite group of six incoming graduate students who were selected based on criteria such as scholarly achievement, community impact, and the potential to make substantive contributions to their discipline. In this University-wide competition, outstanding incoming students are nominated by their graduate programs, and the awardees each receive a one-year fellowship in the amount of $35,000. The reception will be held from 6:00 to 7:00 pm in the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center Rotunda.

The Graduate School began offering the fellowships in an effort to recruit and retain highly talented students to the University's graduate programs.

"We had many outstanding nominees, and choosing the top six candidates was a challenging process. The fellowship winners are all very successful students who have exceptional backgrounds. Among the six awardees, accomplishments include Master's degrees from Harvard and the University of Oxford, numerous research awards and fellowships, as well as acceptances to many of the other top universities in their fields," stated David Zeh, Dean of the Graduate School.

"These fellowships highlight the University's commitment to the success of our graduate programs and the growing efforts towards being classified as one of the top research institutions in the nation." said Zeh, referencing the University's goal of achieving the highest Carnegie Research classification (R1).

2017 Graduate Dean's Fellowship Winners

• Mahmoud Amin Aboukifa, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Isayas Berhe Adhanom, Computer Science and Engineering
• Katherine Chang, Political Science
• Grant T. Fairchild, Integrative Neuroscience
• Sarah Anne Moody, Interdisciplinary Social Psychology
• Birendra Rana, Geography

Fellowship supports graduate student recruitment and success

"With graduate student enrollment increasing and the addition of more than 100 Graduate Teaching Assistant lines in the last several years, we have made progress towards growing our graduate research programs. However, our efforts must continue to be focused on recruiting highly talented students and providing them with the resources that they need to be successful in graduate school," said Veronica Zepeda, Director of Graduate Student Services. The Graduate School and Graduate Student Association has made progress in both areas by piloting campus visit programs for prospective graduate students and a series of professional development workshops for current students.

In addition to offering the Dean's Fellowships, the Graduate School is awarding up to 76 merit scholarships to high-achieving incoming and currently enrolled master's and doctoral students. These one-year, $5,000 scholarships have already been awarded to 30 graduate students, with additional awardees to be announced in early October.

Please visit the Graduate School website for more information on the Graduate Dean's Awards.