About the Awards

To support the best and brightest graduate students pursuing studies in an area(s) of environmental sustainability, the Graham Institute will provide 6 graduate fellowships annually. These fellowships will provide two years of funding with priority consideration given to Ph.D. candidates with expressed interests in the Institute’s focused research areas:

• Energy Sustainability – Including new forms, renewable sources, and technologies that increase energy efficiency.
• Freshwater and Marine System Sustainability – Including the protection, remediation, and management of watersheds, rivers, lakes, aquifers, estuaries, bays, fisheries, etc. Linkages among aquatic systems; impacts of invasive species, nutrient over enrichment, and contaminants; and treatment and remediation are emphasized.
• Human Health and the linkage to a changing environment – Including the understanding, measurement, and prediction of environmental factors that impact human health, as well as the impacts of potential technologies, processes and policies to reduce or remediate contaminated environments.
• Global Change and Biodiversity – The impacts of human activities (e.g., emissions of greenhouse gases and pollution, agriculture, land use/cover change, etc.) on global systems sustainability.
• Sustainable Infrastructure, Built Environment, and Manufacturing Systems – Includes investigation into sustainable infrastructures and related manufacturing, e.g., innovation in design, materials, and processing to avoid pollution, as well as the impacts of organizations and policy on environmental performance.
• Environmental Policymaking and Human Behavior – Including the study of the capacity of local, regional, state, national, and global institutions to act in the environmental realm, and the reforms, including education, needed to enhance their ability to incorporate scientific knowledge regarding the environment into their policymaking.

Although any U-M graduate student, both domestic and international*, interested in studying issue(s) integral to environmental sustainability is eligible for these fellowships, students can not apply directly. Rather, only faculty nominations will be considered, and each faculty member may nominate only one student a year. Nominations of students pursuing joint/dual degrees are particularly encouraged.

Award Amounts

These fellowships will provide $25K/year for two years, for a total Graham Institute support of $50K. These awards are to be supplemented to the equivalent of a 50% GSRA appointment by the student’s faculty advisor(s) and/or home department. More information about the required matching support can be found in the RFP.

*International students should contact the Graham Institute for more information about applying.

Application Process

Specific information on the required application materials are contained in the Request for Proposals (RFP), but applications require a CV, two letters of recommendation, transcripts, a statement of student's educational goals, and a statement of matching financial support from the faculty advisor and/or department representative. Follow this link for detailed guidelines for applying.

To apply, please CLICK HERE.

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