The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced this year’s recipients of Graduate Research Fellowships (GRF), and the UCSB Department of Geography would like to congratulate our own Kate Voss for being offered a fellowship and Michelle Oyewole for receiving an honorable mention. There were over 14,000 applications for this highly competitive program which awarded 2,000 fellowships and 1,992 honorable mentions this year.
GRF Program fellows receive three years of support for graduate study leading to research-based masters or doctoral degrees. The support is intended for students who are at the early stages of their graduate study, and it includes a $32,000 annual stipend, a $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the institution, International research and professional development opportunities, and XSEDE Supercomputer access.
“The graduate students awarded the GRF in 2014 represent a diverse group of scientific disciplines and come from all states and the District of Columbia, as well as commonwealths and territories of the United States. They are also a diverse group of individuals. Among the 2,000 awardees, 1,069 are women, 382 are from underrepresented minority groups, 55 are persons with disabilities, and 37 are veterans. The Fellows in the 2014 class come from 442 baccalaureate institutions, 58 more than in 2010, when the program first began awarding 2,000 fellowships each year” (source).
UCSB as a whole was well-represented among both the awardees and the honorable mentions, with 23 and 22 in each respective category. “As the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the GRFP has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers. The reputation of the GRFP follows recipients and often helps them become life-long leaders that contribute significantly to both scientific innovation and teaching. Past fellows include numerous Nobel Prize winners, a U.S. Secretary of Energy (Steven Chu), the Google founder (Sergey Brin), and Freakonomics co-author, Steven Levitt” (source).
