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This summer, the Graduate School launched a new Dissertation Completion Fellowship program for doctoral students in the Colleges of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Humanities and Fine Arts. The Dissertation Completion Fellowship provides a stipend and structured writing support over the summer. Twenty-one students were awarded fellowships by the Graduate School, with an additional three students funded by SBS.

As Graduate School Dean Jacqueline Urla explains, this pilot fellowship program follows on the heels of doctoral program reviews of these colleges.

“Our review showed that students in these colleges are heavily burdened with teaching,” Urla says. “Providing a concentrated period of summer support with no other duties can be a game changer in helping students make progress and reach their final goal.”

Heidi Bauer-Clapp and Johanna Yunker, of the Graduate School Office of Professional Development, designed the fellowship program to incorporate positive writing support. Fellowship recipients took part in the Graduate School’s Dissertation Writing Retreat at the beginning of the summer fellowship period to establish healthy writing habits and outline their summer writing plan. They were also invited to join a writing group to continue to connect over the summer, share writing goals and challenges and combat the sense of isolation students can experience while writing their dissertation.

Fellowship recipient Thomas Daventry-Shea, doctoral candidate in philosophy, says he values the writing group as a feature of the fellowship.

“The meetings prompt you to reflect on the process of writing itself, which is something we all know we ought to do, but typically don't do often enough,” he says. “Being more intentional in thinking about which writing practices work better than others has definitely helped me to make the most out of these summer months.”

The Graduate School awarded Dissertation Completion Fellowships to the following students: 

• Christine Bailey, Political Science
• Katie Billings, Sociology
• Victoria Bochniak, Anthropology 
• Rowshan Chowdhury, English
• Thomas Daventry-Shea, Philosophy
• Mary Dickman, Communication
• Rafael Freire, Comparative Literature
• Venus Green, Sociology
• Joohyeon Han-Johnson, Anthropology
• Peter Kent-Stoll, Sociology
• Catherine Kitrinos, Anthropology 
• Yosho Miyata, Linguistics
• Mitia Nath, English
• Celia Sainz Delgado, Spanish and Portuguese Studies 
• Brie Shaw, Anthropology
• Ana Eugenia Smith Aguilar, Anthropology
• Alexander Thim, Economics
• Thakshala Tissera, English
• Janell Tryon, English
• Gazi Uddin, Resource Economics
• Susanne Westerhoff-Uprety, Political Science
• Bing Xia, History
• Jia Zhang, W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
• Yuxi Zhou, Communication