Last week, Peter Vanable, dean of the Graduate School, announced the distribution of $750,000 in new funds to expand doctoral program degree conferrals and strengthen the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students. These funds, through the Research Excellence Doctoral Funding (REDF) program, will support 36 additional fellowships and research assistantships across 16 academic departments.
As previously announced, the newly established REDF program is supported by the University’s Invest Syracuse initiative and administered by the Graduate School. REDFs will be awarded annually on a competitive basis to support new and continuing doctoral students. In the inaugural year of the REDF program, the Graduate School received applications from 22 academic departments.
Funding decisions were based on the strength of the applicant’s strategic proposal for increasing the number of doctoral degrees conferred in its academic department and supporting the recruitment and retention of diverse doctoral students, as well as current indicators of program quality and success.
Applications were reviewed by senior leaders from each of the schools and colleges that submitted an application, as well as by Vanable, Vice President for Research John Liu, Associate Provost Chris Johnson, Associate Graduate School Dean Gabby Chapman and Graduate Dean’s Faculty Fellow for Diversity and Inclusion Professor Dawit Negussey.
“All of the applications that we received were thoughtfully prepared and included a number of excellent ideas for growing doctoral degree conferrals and improving diversity and inclusion,” says Vanable. “We are pleased to offer these significant, additional funding opportunities to support graduate student success. This investment will allow us to strengthen the research and graduate education experience at Syracuse and advance our leadership in diversity and inclusion.”
Funding will be provided to awardees annually for a period of three years, beginning in the 2019-20 academic year. All doctoral degree-granting departments will be invited to apply for additional REDF awards after three years of funding.
The departments listed below received full or partial funding of the amount requested in their applications. The number in parentheses represents the number of funding lines that will be provided within a given department to support a distinct fellowship or research assistantship opportunity.
Departments receiving full funding:
| Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (3) |
| Earth Sciences (3) |
| Biomedical & Chemical Engineering (3) |
| Information Science and Technology (3) |
| Public Administration (3) |
| Physics (3) |
| Economics (3) |
| Psychology (2) |
| Political Science (3) |
Departments receiving partial funding:
| Composition and Cultural Rhetoric (2) |
| Special Education (2) |
| EECS (2) |
| Biology (1) |
| Sociology (1) |
| Audiology (1) |
| Cultural Foundations of Education (1) |
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