Graduate Employment (GE) 

All Environmental Studies graduate students receive funding for their master's or ESSP doctoral programs. The program offers graduate employee (GE) appointments for all admitted graduate students. These GE appointments take the form of teaching assistants, research assistants, or administrative positions. The positions cover tuition, pay a stipend at the GTFF union-negotiated rate, and provide health insurance and other benefits.

Typically, doctoral students are given five years of GE funding and support, while master's students usually receive two years of GE appointments.  

Soderwall Research Grants 

Generous support from the Arnold Soderwall Environmental Studies Endowment Fund allows the Environmental Studies Program to provide graduate students with funding for research expenditures, such as conference travel, research equipment and supplies, travel for research, or other research-related expenses. 

Other Information and Guidelines: Priority for funding starts with those presenting research at a conference, followed by those who wish to attend a conference to promote their research.  Funds cannot be used to pay tuition, supplies for classes, or travel that is primarily for educational purposes, and equipment purchased with these funds remains with the ENVS program.

Summer Research Fellowships 

The Environmental Studies department if often able to award Summer Research Fellowships for several graduate students over the summer. These fellowships are for master's students and Ph.D. students to use for direct research costs such as travel or fieldwork, or to compensate for time devoted to data analysis, research, or writing.

Eligibility and Criteria: The fellowship cannot be held at the same time as another summer GE position, and students without access to summer GEships or other summer funding through their focal departments will receive highest priority for these fellowships. Master's students can only hold this Fellowship one time. 

A call for applications will be sent to current ENVS graduate students and faculty annually, in the spring, as funding becomes available.  

Interdisciplinary Environmental Seed Grants 

The Environmental Studies department occasionally offers $5,000 seed grants to encourage new and emergent interdisciplinary research collaborations with graduate students in the Environmental Studies program. 

These seed grants are designed to encourage and support the development of new and/or early-stage interdisciplinary research collaborations within the Environmental Studies Program. Projects usually have (1) an applied component (broadly construed) and/or (2) a commitment to building connections across the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and/or professional schools. All proposals must have at least one ENVS/ESSP graduate student and can even include multidisciplinary teams of graduate students.