Special Endowed Fellowships

Three fellowships for continuing students, outlined below, are awarded by departmental nomination once a year in the spring. Graduate Council will evaluate and make determinations on the winners.

Nettie S. Autrey Fellowship

To provide a fellowship for an outstanding graduate student in a field of science (open to any academic area in Natural Sciences or Engineering and Computing). One award of $14,000 will be given.

Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship

To provide a fellowship for a graduate student whose record at Rice shows evidence of outstanding achievement and promise. Five awards will be given, one in Social Sciences, one in Humanities, and three in any discipline. Each award will provide a fellowship of $16,750.

NOTE: Graduate Programs may nominate one candidate to be considered for both the Autrey and Vaughn Fellowships. All nominated candidates will be considered for both the Autrey and Vaughn Fellowships.

Mrs. L. F. McCollum Fellowship

To provide a fellowship for graduate students in Architecture and Music. Two awards will be given, one in Architecture and one in Music. Each award will provide a fellowship of $3,250.

For the McCollum Fellowship, each school may either nominate one student for the full award, or two students scheduled to graduate in December, each with an award of $1,625, paid in the fall semester only. Graduate programs submitting multiple candidates for any given fellowship should rank order such candidates. Please address the question of the candidate's appropriateness for the particular fellowship in question, as it is defined in this memo.

Eligibility

Students who are past recipients of one of these fellowships are not eligible for nomination for the same or any other of these fellowships. Graduate Council has stated that preference will be given to candidates who have already started their thesis research.

Application information

• Nominations should be sent to the Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies for review by the Graduate Council.
  • All nominations must be received by the stated deadline. No exceptions will be granted.
  • For each graduate program or school, upload a single PDF containing the entire nomination package at the link provided when the application opens.
• The nomination PDF must contain the following items, in order:
  • A cover sheet.
    • This cover sheet should list the names of the candidates, the number of years that the candidates have been at Rice (as of this academic year, 2023-24), a list of the candidates’ previous graduate degrees, and the names of the institutions at which these degrees were earned, and the graduate program’s rank of each candidate. In addition, this sheet should contain a brief (one paragraph) summary of each of the candidates’ research topics.
  • For each candidate, include the following material in the single page .pdf:
    • A one-page research and achievements summary written by the candidate
    • An unofficial transcript
    • The candidate’s C.V.
    • A letter of recommendation from the advisor or another faculty member
    • A letter of nomination from the department chair, graduate program director, or director of graduate study