Funding Opportunities

• Dan Rich Doctoral Dissertation Award
  • Awarded to a student who has, through their doctoral work, developed an idea and created the potential to make a valuable difference in the lives of Delawareans.
• Wilbur Owen Sypherd Doctoral Dissertation Award
  • In the Humanities (Art History, Communication, English, History, Linguistics and Preservation Studies)
• George Herbert Ryden Doctoral Dissertation Award
  • In the Social Sciences (Criminology, Disaster Science and Management, Economics, Education, Energy and Environmental Policy, Hospitality Business Analytics, Human Development and Family Sciences, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Political Science & International Relations, Public Policy and Administration, Sociology and Statistics Data Science.)
• Allan P. Colburn Doctoral Dissertation Award
  • In the Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (Biomedical, Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, Ocean, and Materials Science Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics)
• Theodore Wolf Doctoral Dissertation Award
  • In the Physical and Life Sciences (Animal and Food Sciences, Applied Physiology, Biological Sciences, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Climatology, Communication Sciences & Disorders, Entomology & Wildlife Ecology, Epidemiology, Geography, Geology, Health Behavior Science & Promotion, Marine Studies, Medical Sciences, Nursing Science, Nutrition Science, Oceanography, Plant & Soil Sciences and Physics)
• Interdisciplinary Research Doctoral Dissertation Award
  • In Interdisciplinary Research (Bioinformatics Data Science, Biomechanics and Movement Science, Economic Education, Financial Services Analytics, Medical Sciences, Ocean Engineering, Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, Microbiology, Quantum Science and Engineering, and Water Science and Policy.)

The Interdisciplinary Frontier Graduate and Postdoctoral Fellows (Frontier) program has four objectives. The program will:

1. Advance transformative research and discovery at UD on a contemporary problem or question of profound importance that is best approached from a radically interdisciplinary perspective
2. Support interdisciplinary cohorts of graduate students and possibly a postdoc working side-by-side with a team of faculty mentors from distinct units
3. Prepare graduate students and postdocs to successfully collaborate across disciplinary boundaries
4. Catalyze successful, new faculty collaborations that might not otherwise exist due to institutional barriers.

A Frontier team consists of faculty principal investigators along with a cohort of fellows who are doctoral students and possibly a postdoc. The creation of a Frontier team will be competitive and may be sustained for two years depending upon progress toward the objectives. There may be up to three fellows in each Frontier team. Teams can consist of no more than three graduate student fellows and no more than one postdoc fellow. Graduate fellows must have completed their basic coursework and preliminary exams. Each fellow must be mentored by a unique faculty investigator.

The Graduate College invites nominations for the Unidel Distinguished Graduate Scholars Award, designated for students newly admitted to doctoral programs. This is the premier award offered to doctoral students by the University of Delaware. It is used to 1) recognize exceptional doctoral students from diverse backgrounds and training and 2) provide matriculated students with intellectual and professional experiences that foster the development of disciplinary and community leaders. These awards are highly competitive and are selected by a faculty review committee.

Graduate College recruiting grants are open to proposals up to $5,000 to support departmental or program-wide recruiting activities that aim to increase the diversity and quality of our graduate and professional students.

Awards are competitive and administered by the University. They are awarded based on many criteria including challenging social, economic, educational, cultural or other life circumstances; academic achievements; first-generation graduate student status; and/or need as determined by federal income guidelines (FAFSA).

Doctoral programs are invited to submit names and dossiers of nominees for the Graduate College’s Doctoral Fellowship for Excellence. Students may NOT self-nominate, although they are encouraged to communicate with their advisor and/or program leaders if they would like to be considered for nomination. This is especially important if the student engages in relevant activities outside the academic program. Doctoral Fellowships for Excellence are competitive and are granted for one year, with the opportunity to be re-nominated for a second year. Students may not hold this award for more than two years during their doctoral studies, whether in back-to-back or separate years.

Students may be nominated for this fellowship in recognition of their noteworthy contributions to their scholarship, teaching, or leadership and service activities. Programs may consider nominees who demonstrate excellence in one or multiple categories. While not extensive, examples of activities that fall into the different categories are below:

• Scholarship – significant contributions to the discipline through research and creative projects, often evidenced by awards, intellectual property and publications.
• Teaching – exemplary work in supporting the teaching mission of the program or related disciplines, often evidenced through feedback from students impacted or innovations noticed by the lead instructor/faculty mentors.
• Leadership and service – meaningful efforts to change policies and practices in the program or discipline more generally, especially aimed at students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, and often evidenced by activities led in official or unofficial leadership roles or feedback from students impacted.

 

The Graduate Student Travel Award is supported by the Office of the Provost to help University of Delaware graduate students participate in significant professional conferences pertaining to their field of study. Conference travel is essential to the academic growth and development of graduate students. It affords opportunities for presenting student work in a professional setting and for networking and exposure to the latest academic research.

The Summer Doctoral Fellowship provides stipend support for doctoral students who do not have summer appointments or who do not have appointments at the campus minimum stipend rate.​

This award offers support on a competitive basis for eligible University of Delaware humanities graduate students whose research is collections-based. Individual awards of up to $4,500 will be available for summer research travel to libraries, archives, and museums worldwide. Priority consideration will be given to proposals related to doctoral dissertation and master’s thesis research (and internship placements, for Art Conservation students).

Under the direction of the Charles F. Hummel Director of Conservation, the Unidel Louise Roselle Graduate Assistant will work with conservation and other museum staff on activities involving the care and preservation of the Winterthur collection. The assistantship is to focus on the assessment and planning for a major storage project, providing an opportunity to work with a variety of object types, study current storage options, and share the progress of the project through various media.