Department of Political Science Diversity Award

Help us offer this scholarship on an ongoing basis!

We need to reach $60,000!

Amazingly we have hit our stretch goal of $10,000! Thank you to our donors for your incredible contributions and enthusiasm! We are so grateful! But with more time left on this Crowdfund, we have decided to set a more ambitious goal: to raise enough to endow this summer scholarship so that we can offer it on a permanent basis. 

Any donations beyond our $10,000 stretch goal will go towards a permanent endowment for this scholarship. This was always our long-term goal but we did not imagine we could already start working on it during our first fundraiser. If you can help us with this long-term goal, please do!!!

In order to reach the level where we can begin to endow this scholarship we need to raise $60,000.

To be clear, even if we cannot reach the $60,000 endowment level, your donations will still be used to to fund the Department of Political Science Diversity Award in the near future! And it will make a huge difference in the lives of our graduate students.

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Scholarship for Promoting the Success of Historically Underrepresented and Marginalized Communities in Graduate Studies in Political Science

Our Department has chosen to reaffirm our longstanding commitment to undergraduate and graduate students from historically underrepresented and marginalized communities in political science by raising new funds to support them. Our first fundraising drive for this larger project is to support summer research and study by doctoral candidates who are first-generation college students, who come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, or who are otherwise able to contribute to a diverse educational environment.  

Summer funding for graduate students is hard to come by. We have a limited number of summer grants that support collaborative research by faculty and students, some summer teaching assistantships, and an even more limited number of research positions. Together, these opportunities are not enough to support all our graduate students, meaning that each summer some of our students have to work off-campus (e.g., as baristas or wait staff or in retail). Summer funding is critical throughout a graduate student’s career at UC Davis. Early on, summer funding can make a huge difference in achieving success in the comprehensive examinations: a necessary step to advancing to candidacy, and, even more importantly, offering the student a chance to consolidate the first year or two of graduate learning in the foundations of the discipline. Later, summer funding can enable collaborative research with faculty or the submission of original research for publication. These experiences are especially important for students who come into their studies with less exposure to the substantive and methodological content of political science, and/or to the culture and practices of academia more broadly.

We are acutely aware of the higher attrition rates of underrepresented students in graduate programs across the country. Summer funding to support focused study and research can be pivotal to future success in graduate study and ensuring students remain in the program.