Darci Pauser, a doctoral candidate in the Maxwell School, is examining regional freshwater access from water basins controlled by two powerful Middle Eastern countries. Ashley O’Mara, a Ph.D. candidate in English in the College of Arts and Sciences, is researching literature of the English Reformation to better understand queer asexuality and sexuality more broadly in today’s society.
This summer, both are able to dedicate more hours toward their research and dissertations with the help of a new Graduate School fellowship.
Pauser and O’Mara are among 50 doctoral candidates who were awarded $4,000 Summer Dissertation Fellowships, which provide funding to help candidates focus on their dissertations instead of having to work extra hours—away from their research—to support themselves.
Darci Pauser
“Without the Graduate School Summer Fellowship, I would have had to take on additional work hours to cover basic living expenses,” Pauser says. “This funding fills an important financial gap between annual academic cycles and has made it possible for me to focus on further data analysis and writing during the summer.”
The fellowships were initiated to provide funding to help doctoral candidates complete their dissertations in a timely manner and to address the need for more summer funding opportunities. The funding is provided through the Invest Syracuse initiative to strengthen support for graduate education and research.
“We had a tremendous response from doctoral students across the entire University. Having received well over 170 applications, we elected to fund an additional 20 slots based on the depth and strength of the applicant pool, bringing the total to 50 funded fellowships,” says Associate Provost and Graduate School Dean Peter Vanable. “This funding initiative is integral to a broader set of initiatives to elevate the success of our doctoral students in completing their degrees in a timely fashion.”
Pauser’s dissertation examines the regional political dynamics of water sharing from the Tigris-Euphrates, originating in Turkey, and the Jordan-Yarmouk, originating in Israel.
“Both Turkey and Israel affect the quality and quantity of freshwater available to neighboring countries via their domestic water management policies,” says Pauser, who is majoring in international relations, with a minor in public policy. “By determining the ways in which international, transnational and domestic pressures for water management are balanced by these regionally powerful countries, I will provide insight into freshwater access within what is projected to be an increasingly water-scarce area.”
Ashley O’Mara
O’Mara’s research focuses on queer asexuality in the literature of Shakespeare’s time.
“I argue that the English Reformation’s hostility toward celibacy set the stage for heterosexual marriage culture as we now know it,” O’Mara says. “For that reason, sympathetic representations of celibacy could enact resistance to heteronormativity. Recovering those performances can help us better understand not only queer asexuality but also sexuality more broadly today.”
While Pauser and O’Mara focus on their research over the summer, the summer fellowship will help cover their living expenses for the summer.
“My program relies on a nine-month funding situation; bridging the financial gap between semesters is crucial to keep students’ research from being derailed by locating, applying for and securing outside employment to cover cost of living,” O’Mara says.
Following are the students—listed with their program and the name of their faculty advisor—who were awarded fellowships:
To apply for the fellowship, doctoral students must be in good standing, have completed all their required coursework and qualifying exam, have a commitment to making significant progress toward completing their dissertation, and confirm that the fellowship would serve as their primary source of summer funding. Applications were scored by two members of a multi-disciplinary faculty review panel appointed by Vanable.
