Top row, left to right: Sharanya Bashyam, Rachel Bauman, Hanna Dosenko, Yuting Gu. Bottom row, left to right: Suyeon Jang, Yanting Li, Allison Morehouse, Kelsey Weymouth-Little.
  • June 30, 2026

  • Dean's Leadership Society Doctoral Dissertation Research Support Fellowship Program launches to fill federal funding gap for graduate students

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For graduate students pursuing a Ph.D., completion of a successful dissertation serves as the final stamp of approval denoting all doctoral requirements have been met. Getting there – from idea generation, fieldwork and data collection to many, many rewrites and finally, dissertation defense – requires a host of resources, not the least of which includes funding. However, in recent years, highly successful federal grant and research fellowship programs run by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health which have previously supported this work have seen their programs suspended or their funding halved, potentially derailing Ph.D. students’ progress across all fields of research.

To help, the UCI School of Social Sciences launched the Dean's Leadership Society Doctoral Dissertation Research Support Fellowship. Supported generously by the school’s main donor group bearing the fellowship’s namesake, the program mimics the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant program (DDRI) which was terminated in late 2025.

“With on-going disruptions to these long-standing federal programs that serve as pipelines for Ph.D. students, we knew we had to address the situation,” says Bill Maurer, social sciences dean. “Our new DLS Doctoral Dissertation Research Support Fellowship program represents that effort.”

For the competition, student applicants were asked to prepare NSF-style proposals following NSF's guidelines, along with a budget for direct costs totaling no more than $10,000. Holly Hapke, social sciences director of research development, and Michael McBride, graduate studies acting associate dean, led the process with the school’s Executive Committee which reviewed and evaluated proposals, providing written feedback to replicate the experience of applying for a federal grant.

“This fellowship opportunity and process serve both to address the funding need but also to ensure our students benefit from the professionalization experience of grant proposal peer review that is so vital to their development as scientists and scholars,” says Hapke.

Additional support from four of the school’s research centers – the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, Jack W. Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy, Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies, and Center for Theoretical Behavioral Sciences – and a fundraising push on Giving Day supported by social sciences alumni and friends allowed the school to select eight inaugural fellowship recipients as opposed to a planned five for the coming academic year.

Their work, spanning topics as diverse as family dynamics, memory and war, represents the breadth and depth of social sciences research, and the very best and brightest among our graduate student researchers, says McBride.

“There were so many excellent proposals from across the school, which is a testament to the work of our graduate students and the value of their research,” he says. “Congratulations to our award recipients, and a big thank you to our generous donors for making these awards possible.”

Inaugural recipients and their respective advisors include:

  • Sharanya Bashyam, Cognitive Sciences, advised by Nadia Chernyak, Associate Professor
  • Rachel Bauman, Sociology, advised by Kristin Turney, Dean’s Professor
  • Hanna Dosenko, Anthropology, advised by Tom Boellstorff, Professor
  • Yuting Gu, Language Science, advised by Xin Xie, Assistant Professor
  • Suyeon Jang, Sociology, advised by Francesca Polletta, Chancellor’s Professor
  • Yanting Li, Language Science, advised by Greg Scrontas & Richard Futrell, Associate Professors
  • Allison Morehouse, Cognitive Sciences, advised by Sara Mednick, Professor
  • Kelsey Weymouth-Little, Sociology, advised by Francesca Polletta, Chancellor’s Professor

The official call for the 2027-28 DLS Doctoral Dissertation Research Support Fellows will go out in late summer, with applications due October 15. Visit us online for additional information.

-pictured top row, left to right: Sharanya Bashyam, Rachel Bauman, Hanna Dosenko, Yuting Gu. Bottom row, left to right: Suyeon Jang, Yanting Li, Allison Morehouse, Kelsey Weymouth-Little.

 

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