Forty sustainability-minded master’s and professional-degree students from eight University of Michigan (U-M) schools and colleges recently started the 2014 Dow Sustainability Fellows program, through which they each receive $20,000 for their studies and become part of a collaborative community of scholars focused on sustainability.
“We’re happy to see this diverse group of students accepted into the Dow Sustainability Fellows program,” says Don Scavia, director of the Graham Sustainability Institute, which administers the program on the university’s behalf. “The best ideas and solutions come when diverse perspectives are brought together, and that’s what this interdisciplinary fellowship is all about.”
The new fellows were selected from a distinguished group of 72 nominees (each U-M school/college could nominate up to 10 candidates each) and mark the second cohort of Dow Sustainability Master’s Fellows at the university. They will be with the program from January to December 2014. The new fellows and their nominating schools are as follows:
- College of Engineering: Ali Al-Heji; Elizabeth Grobbel; Deepika Mutukuri; Joshua Novacheck; and Matthew Weibel
- Law School: Sommer Engels; Joseph Halso; Jeffrey Jay; Stephen Scheele; and Sarah Wightman
- College of Literature, Science, & the Arts (LSA): Rachel Chalat
- Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy: Caitlin Jacob; Sarah Mostafa; Kyle Murphy; and Rory Pulvino
- School of Natural Resources & the Environment (SNRE): Kelsea Ballantyne; Geoffrey Burmeister; Adithya Dahagama; William Kletter; Andrea Kraus; Jill Laskowski; and Kristine Schantz
- School of Public Health: Leon Espira; Charlise Randall; Valerie Tran; and Jiayi (Angela) Wan
- Stephen M. Ross School of Business: Josh Cornfeld; Benjamin Hamm; Kenneth Johnson; Maite Madrazo; Kathryn Newhouse; Alex Papo; Julia Ruedig; Benjamin Sevald; Jacob Talbot; and Rahul Tapariya
- Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning: Alexandra Chen; Mary Matucheski; John Monnat; and Daniel Tish
Established through a six-year expendable gift from the Dow Chemical Company, the Dow Sustainability Fellows program supports full-time U-M graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who are committed to finding interdisciplinary, actionable, and meaningful sustainability solutions on local-to-global scales. To foster high-impact collaborations across the university, the fellows program also includes a distinguished awards competition for applied sustainability projects that cut across disciplines and academic levels.
To learn more about the Dow Sustainability Fellows program, visit sustainability.umich.edu/dow.