Graduate students get support for competitive graduate fellowships and awards

Ford, Boren, and Fulbright may sound like a random collection of last names, but these represent the types of prestigious awards and fellowships ASU graduate students receive every year. With the guidance of Dr. Mitch Hobza, senior program manager for Distinguished Graduate Fellowships, part of the Lorraine W. Frank Office of National Scholarships Advisement, graduate students can get support with the application, writing, and submission processes to highly competitive fellowships, awards and grants.

Dr. Hobza's focus is advising ASU graduate students as they prepare applications for major external awards. He will also be advising graduating seniors who are applying for graduate fellowships, in particular NSF-GRFP, Ford Foundation, and Fulbright. Over the next few months, he will share a series of his advice and insights for applicants here in the Graduate Insider blog. 

“Applying to fellowships and grants are a key part of any graduate student’s professional development,” said Dr. Hobza. “These applications are a catalyst for growing as a writer in your discipline, refining your research and career goals, strengthening relationships with faculty and mentors, and potentially receiving access to professional networks and financial support.”

This fall, Dr. Hobza will host a series of information sessions about various competitive fellowships and grants that interested students can attend. These sessions will provide graduate students with tools and resources they can use to locate and apply to competitive fellowships and grants that support different aspects of graduate development, such as fellowships, research grants, and writing grants. There will be in-person and virtual sessions open to all graduate students and a virtual session specifically designed for the needs of international students. 

“On a very pragmatic level, being awarded a graduate fellowship or grant can support your development as a student and researcher, but the application process itself is an opportunity to craft a narrative about the purpose of your work and to learn about your own values and motivations.”

Additionally, Dr. Hobza is coordinating self-paced modules for applicants to engage in asynchronously to improve their applications and refine their research objectives. Dr. Hobza will implement his doctoral research on the role of empathy in writing support to conduct both peer review writing sessions and drop-in writers’ rooms for applicants.

We hope you will follow along with Dr. Hobza’s insights throughout the fall semester.