Matching grants to be part of grad support next fall
Brian Mastroianni
Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Campus News
In 1988, Yimo Lin's '09 parents were far more familiar with College Hill than she was. Her mother, a nuclear physicist, and her father, a lasers and optics engineer, were post-doctoral researchers at Brown. But Yimo was back in their native China, two years old and living with relatives, waiting for her parents to make enough money to bring her to America.
While conducting their research on College Hill, Lin's parents lived in a "one-room attic barely high enough to stand up in," and washed dishes in a French restaurant, earning $25 a night, Lin wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. Though Lin's parents were paid for their research, they needed to supplement it "with whatever work they could find," she wrote.
Two decades later, the Graduate School has spent millions of dollars to offer greater financial support for its students while lessening the need for outside employment. But the policies designed to meet these goals, including both a five-year guarantee of support and a matching grant program that will debut next fall, have critics saying the policies are too broad for a large university with a diverse student body.
For graduate students who need funding beyond their stipends, the University has started a matching program that will take effect during the 2008-09 academic year. "The program is designed for students to find external funding, which is part of their professional training - it provides financial incentive to search for funding outside of the University," said Chad Galts, communications director for the Grad School.
The initiative was prompted by "conversations with graduate students and observations of support within their departments," Bonde said. The departmental support "ensured that the policy was in the best interest of graduate research," Bonde said. The initiative will affect all graduate students, except those who are part of the Division of Biology and Medicine, which has its own separate sources of funds, she said. The program's offer of financial supplements is awarded to students whose external grants provide stipends of $3,000 and up.
While conducting their research on College Hill, Lin's parents lived in a "one-room attic barely high enough to stand up in," and washed dishes in a French restaurant, earning $25 a night, Lin wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. Though Lin's parents were paid for their research, they needed to supplement it "with whatever work they could find," she wrote.
Two decades later, the Graduate School has spent millions of dollars to offer greater financial support for its students while lessening the need for outside employment. But the policies designed to meet these goals, including both a five-year guarantee of support and a matching grant program that will debut next fall, have critics saying the policies are too broad for a large university with a diverse student body.
For graduate students who need funding beyond their stipends, the University has started a matching program that will take effect during the 2008-09 academic year. "The program is designed for students to find external funding, which is part of their professional training - it provides financial incentive to search for funding outside of the University," said Chad Galts, communications director for the Grad School.
The initiative was prompted by "conversations with graduate students and observations of support within their departments," Bonde said. The departmental support "ensured that the policy was in the best interest of graduate research," Bonde said. The initiative will affect all graduate students, except those who are part of the Division of Biology and Medicine, which has its own separate sources of funds, she said. The program's offer of financial supplements is awarded to students whose external grants provide stipends of $3,000 and up.