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Four ME students were among 900 students nationwide to receive National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships in March 2004.
The grants provide three years of support for outstanding students in the early stages of their graduate study leading to research-based Master's or doctoral degrees in the fields of science, mathematics, and engineering supported by the NSF. Each Fellow receives an annual stipend of $30,000 and a cost-of-education allowance of $10,500, paid to the Fellow's institution in lieu of tuition and fees. At Michigan, Rackham Graduate School will pay the tuition difference and provide health insurance.
The ME NSF Graduate Fellowship recipients this year are doctoral pre-candidates James Allison, Michael Cherry, Adam Hendricks, and Jarod Kelly. All are in their first year as ME graduate students.
"The awards are very prestigious," said ME Student Services Associate Cynthia Quann-White, "The applications are reviewed by disciplinary panels of the applicant's chosen field (scientists, mathematicians, and engineers). The panelists judge intellectual merit based on intellectual ability and other accepted requisites for scholarly scientific study."
This year, for the first time, applicants were able to take advantage of a one-day application workshop led by Assistant Professor Katsuo Kurabayashi a month before the application was due. Kurabayashi, who joined the ME faculty in 2000, started the workshop, with the support of Professor Arvind Atrea, the ME Graduate Program Chair, to encourage and support graduate students' applications.
"The key to the successful workshop was to involve a panel of students who had previously received the fellowship," said Kurabayashi. "These students shared how they prepared the fellowship application, with help from their professors and senior students. They even shared some of mistakes that they made in their first try so that the attendees would not make the same mistakes. These students were truly the main contributors to this workshop.
"I feel very proud of the students," said Kurabayashi, "and I have high expectations for them. With the privilege that they enjoy, these students are obligated to perform cutting-edge research and make technological contributions to our society. We need to train them to be competitive researchers and academicians. This will eventually help our research activities become more highly visible."
Read more about the winners:
Be sure to read about our 2003 Winners: (download the PDF)