Gift Guide
To mark its century of support for Michigan’s graduate students, the Graduate School will establish 100 Centennial Awards to be distributed in 2012. These awards are intended to connect donors with scholarly endeavors that are significant and particularly meaningful to them.
The Centennial Awards offer a wide range of giving opportunities:
- A gift of $100 will be pooled with similar contributions to fund a conference grant, enabling a graduate student to present his or her research findings at a gathering of scholars, receive feedback from colleagues, connect with peers, and lay the groundwork for future collaborative projects.
- An expendable gift of $3,000 will enable a graduate student to study and collect data at a distant location. In the past, travel grants have made it possible for master’s and Ph.D. students to pursue research across the globe—from archeological digs in Egypt to polluted rivers in Cambodia, and from the bibliotheques of Paris to the streets of New York.
- An expendable gift of $6,000 will provide a named Spring/Summer Research Grant, to enable a faculty member to collaborate with and support a doctoral student on a research or scholarly project during the Spring/Summer term. Awards are based on the quality, significance and creativity of the proposed project, the achievement and potential of the faculty applicant, the intellectual role of the student, and the commitment of the faculty to provide significant mentoring.
- An expendable gift of $25,000 will fund a dissertation fellowship. Designated for doctoral students engaged in innovative scholarship, this stipend will make it possible for a Ph.D. candidate to focus on completing his or her thesis.
- An endowed gift of $100,000 will establish a named fund to provide research grants for master’s and doctoral students in perpetuity. This legacy gift will build a solid academic foundation for the future—enriching the educational experience of tomorrow’s graduate students by extending their potential for high-impact research.
- An endowed gift of $250,000 will establish a named fund to support a doctoral student who is completing his or her dissertation.
- An endowed gift of $750,000 will establish a fund to provide an annual named fellowship for a Rackham master’s or doctoral student. The endowed named fellowships will be used to recruit the most promising graduate students, those who show evidence of making a significant difference in their fields.
- A bequest made through an estate plan will help graduate students of the future address challenges and study issues that cannot even be foreseen at this point in time.
For 100 years, the Rackham Graduate School has produced outstanding scholars and skilled professionals, men and women of high achievement and high integrity who are ready to assume leadership in the wider world.
Whether they are discovering treatments for chronic diseases, analyzing the root causes of intractable societal problems, or teaching the next generation how to think critically about the world around them, University of Michigan graduate students are agents of change. By supporting the Graduate School, you will be supporting a large and diverse group of globally engaged students who are preparing to pursue innovative research and practices that address some of the world’s most critical and complex problems.
We invite you to become part of this century-long tradition. Please join us in helping U-M graduate students make a difference.
If you would like to talk with someone in Rackham Development about making a gift, please contact any of the following staff members:
Wendy Ascione, Annual Giving Officer, (734) 764-5536, wascione@umich.edu
Kathy Holmes, Major Gift Officer, (734) 647-4572, kdholmes@umich.edu
Jill McDonough, Director of Development and Alumni Relations, (734) 615-2133, jillmcd@umich.edu