The deadline for submitting a Letter of Intent (LOI) for the Chancellor's Graduate Research Fellowship is coming up soon, on September 17, 2012. This fellowship, administered through the Graduate College, provides $4000 in support of graduate student research projects to be carried out in the Spring and/or Summer semesters which are interdisciplinary in nature, and the fellowship can be renewed in the same amount for a second year. While you can read more about this particular research-oriented fellowship and obtain the necessary application materials at http://grad.uic.edu/cms/?pid=1000778, I would like to emphasize a few aspects of the fellowship here that make it a good fit for students who need a supplement for already existing research funds or are carrying out a small-scale project or pilot project that requires a modest amount of funding.
By interdisciplinary, we mean that the research project involves theory, methods, and or creative approaches that cross traditional disciplinary lines, and the student is either carrying out the research in direct collaboration with, or consulting with, scholars in varying disciplines at UIC, or the student has significantly incorporated the work of extra-disciplinary scholars (at UIC or elsewhere) into their research.
This description fits a great number of graduate student research projects at UIC, and past recipients of the award have been from departments as diverse as History, Social Work, Economics, Psychology, Education, Biology, Engineering, Medicinal Chemistry, Biopharmaceutical Sciences, Germanic Studies, and Community Health Sciences. For example, a student in Social Work received an award recently for a project that examined the effects of a music studio space on helping homeless youth in a transitional living program to cope with stress, research that integrated research in the fields of social work, communication, psychology, and performing arts. Another successful applicant from the Psychology Department combined work in the fields of psychology, biology, neuroscience and psychiatry to explore the question of whether neurobehavioral biomarkers for depression predict a family history of psychopathology.
The letter of intent to apply for this award is a very simple form found on our website above that requires only a brief description of your project. The more detailed application, which requires a letter from your faculty advisor and additional documentation, is due on October 8, 2012.
Please contact Cheryl Johnson (cherylj@uic.edu) if you have questions about this award.
Dr. Laura Lee Junker
Associate Dean
The Graduate College, University of Illinois at Chicago