Supporting GSAS
The central mission of the Graduate School is to provide the maximum possible support for our students. Above all, that means a significant increase in the funding available for fellowships. All doctoral students receive a fellowship (normally a nine-month stipend), but the support offered by peer institutions have risen sharply. To remain competitive and to enable graduate students to complete their degree without delay, it is imperative that we raise stipends and find ways to increase significantly the support available for doctoral students.
Why Graduate Fellowships Are So Important
- Competitive fellowships enable Brandeis to continue to attract first-rate graduate students and to help them complete their degrees as promptly as possible (without the delays caused by part-time employment).
- Superb graduate students enrich the University's undergraduate mission, complementing the work of senior faculty and increasing the intellectual intensity of an undergraduate education (especially in such vital matters as the development of writing skills).
- A robust graduate program is essential to attracting a research faculty—who seek the richer intellectual life generated by a graduate environment and who find Brandeis' graduate programs one of its most attractive features. To attract and retain such faculty, it is essential to build and sustain strong graduate programs.
- High-caliber graduate programs are also a critical part of the University’s broader mission to serve the community—to train the next generation of researchers and faculty who appreciate the importance of both research and teaching and who can embody that ethos so central to Brandeis’s identity.
Kinds of Support
The Graduate School appreciates all gifts at any level of support:
- Endowing a fellowship to provide tuition and stipends for students.
- Endowing dissertation-year fellowships to enable advanced graduate students to complete the dissertation.
- Endowing summer fellowships to complement the usual 9-month fellowship.
- Gifts, of any amount, to the general Graduate School fund for fellowships (to help increase stipends and make them more competitive).
- Gifts to supplement existing funds for summer research grants (to cover travel and expenses for dissertation research), conference travel (to attend professional meetings and deliver papers), and to fund special training costs (to improve language training and develop other essential skills).
- Gifts to the Graduate School Annual Fund which enable the Graduate School to operate effectively and meet its goals.
How to Give
You may donate online ; by clicking "Make My Gift" and then selecting "The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Annual Fund" as the recipient. If you have questions or wish to make a gift over the phone, you may contact Ms. Erin Warnke (warnke@brandeis.edu; 781-736-4064) in the Development Office. If you have questions about the Graduate School and its needs, please feel free to contact Dean Gregory L. Freeze (freeze@brandeis.edu; 781-736-3407).