Chancellor's Doctoral Fellowship

In 2013, Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little established the Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellowship to recruit the very best and most talented graduate students to study at the University of Kansas. This prestigious fellowship recognizes students who exemplify the Chancellor’s values for doctoral education, including academic excellence, research productivity, an ability to communicate the value of their research to a broad audience, and a vision for leadership within the Fellow’s field of study.

Recipients may be from any area of doctoral study in a program on the Lawrence or Edwards campus and the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in the Biomedical Sciences at the KU Medical Center campus. Students funded by the Self Graduate Fellowship, University Graduate Fellowship, or the Bernadette Gray-Little Graduate Fellowship are not eligible. Recipients of the Fellowship will be selected through a nomination/application process early in the spring semester prior to the fall start of the student’s first academic year. Fellows may be either domestic or international students.

AWARD STRUCTURE

The Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellowship provides selected Fellows with a yearly $31,000 stipend for four years, in addition to tuition, fees, and a 75% subsidy of the student health insurance plan premium. Awards are disbursed as 12-month GRA appointments at 0.50 FTE.  The Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellowship employs a cohort model, welcoming four new Fellows each year. 

SELECTION CRITERIA

To be considered for a Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellowship, a new applicant to KU must be nominated by a department as a candidate for the award.  Departments will identify their most competitive student who exemplifies the Chancellor’s values and work with the student to compile a nomination packet. 

The nomination will include the following:

• The candidate's graduate application
• A departmental letter of nomination
  • The department's nomination letter must address: 
    • the candidate's academic excellence and research productivity (publications, creative works, awards, scholarships, and funding will be highly valued) 
    • how the candidate shows their vision for their field of study and how they plan to use a doctoral education from KU to launch themselves into a leadership role in their field
• In addition, departments will be asked to submit a document briefly describing the department's recruitment activities including the tools and strategies employed in recruitment efforts, strategies employed to build a diverse applicant pool, and how top candidates are identified for nomination. Please see the application in Slate for more details. 

NOMINATION PROCESS:

The nomination for this award matches the nomination process for the Bernadette Gray-Little Graduate Fellowship. 

To nominate a student please select the nominating information through Slate and complete the nomination form. Further instructions on accessing Slate and submitting the nomination form and documents will be added soon and sent to departments. 

Individuals nominated will be reviewed for both the Bernadette Gray-Little Graduate Fellowship and the Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellowship.

Maximum 5 nominations per department.

NOMINATION DEADLINE: January 26th, 2022

Please email Nicole Reiz, nreiz@ku.edu with questions.

SELECTION TIMELINE

• Department nominations due by January 26
• Evaluations and video interviews occur in February and early March
• Offers are made by mid-March
• Fellows must register a decision by April 15

In this video, learn about two of the 2014 Chancellor Fellows, Keely Brown and Max Murphy: