Purpose
The competitive UC Dissertation-Year Fellowship Program is designed to identify doctoral candidates whose research or planned career focuses on problems relating to disadvantaged segments of society, or who have been educationally or economically disadvantaged. The program provides faculty mentorship, information and advice to students as they prepare to become postdoctoral fellows or candidates for faculty positions. Specifically, Dissertation-Year Fellowships are awarded to eligible graduate students whose doctoral work will be completed by the end of the academic year.
Eligibility
- PhD students who indicate an interest in an academic career in research and teaching
- PhD students who are already advanced to candidacy
- U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or AB 540
- May be in any graduate academic program
- Finishing their dissertations by the end of the academic year
- Entering up to their sixth year of study and meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Experience of situations or conditions that impeded advancing to graduate study, such as the absence of a family member who attended college; matriculation at a school with poor financial or curricular support; having a disability; having worked long hours while attending school; or
- Academic research interests focusing on cultural, societal, or educational problems as they affect educationally disadvantaged segments of society; or
- Evidence of an intention to use the doctoral degree toward serving educationally under-represented segments of society.
Awardee is required to present a seminar on their dissertation research twice during the academic year (once at an appropriate department or graduate group function on the UCSF campus and once at another UC campus or other California university). Up to $1,000 is provided for travel costs. Programs are encouraged to nominate underrepresented minorities, students with physical challenges, and individuals from cultural, linguistic, geographic and socio-economic backgrounds who are underrepresented in graduate student and faculty populations.
Required Nomination Documents/Information
- Statement of Interest (5 MB limit, PDF file)
- Formatted CV (5 MB limit, PDF file in CV template format)
- Unofficial UCSF Transcript (5 MB limit, PDF file)
- Advisor Letter (5 MB limit, PDF File)
- PI/Advisor Name
Support
- One award
- $21,000 stipend divided equally over a twelve month period, September-August
- Resident tuition and fees
- $1,000 for travel expenses to make a research presentation at another university (mandatory)
- Recipients will also attend a UC-wide meeting of all Dissertation-Year Fellows, hosted by UCOP
- The award is not renewable
Awardees
2024-2025
Caitlin Turner – Epidemiology and Translational Science
2023-2024
Priscila Muñoz Sandoval – Biomedical Sciences
Learn more about how this and other internal fellowships are awarded.
