Our Mission
GradFund’s mission is to assist graduate students throughout the process of applying for external fellowships and grants. The process of applying for funding, while challenging, can have a profound effect on the professionalization of graduate scholars. When students are successful in their applications, being awarded external funding confers both distinction and financial benefits, both of which can have a transformative impact on their graduate scholarship and future careers. Helping a student build their professional development toolkit and cultivate scholarly communication skills motivates GradFund's work.
Our Approach
We offer a holistic, peer-mentoring approach to fellowship advising designed to help students integrate the process of applying for merit-based, extramural funding into their graduate careers. Under the leadership of Assistant Dean Teresa M. Delcorso Ellmann, the fellowship advising team works with students individually and through our mentoring programs. Our fellowship advisors are doctoral candidates who have secured external funding. They have been competitively selected to train and work as peer mentors with an emphasis on how to effectively read and critique across disciplinary lines and share best practices in grantsmanship.
Our Services
Our wide range of services, tailored to the diverse needs of our graduate students, have enabled us to incorporate education about graduate funding and grantsmanship throughout the graduate careers of many students. We offer individual appointments for students who want to learn about their funding options, develop funding application plans, or discuss a fellowship or grant application. We also offer tailored presentations and award lists to New Brunswick graduate programs, as well as online tutorials, mentoring programs, and workshops.
Our Online Resources
Our website offers a robust - and constantly growing - set of resources designed to help students educate themselves about their options for applying for external funding, and to help them develop their grantsmanship and scholarly communication skills. Our online tutorials guide students through the development of an application from start to finish. Our knowledgebase contains deep intelligence about awards, funders, and best practices in grantsmanship, and the GradFund database allows graduate students to discover fellowships and grants that are right for them and their plans.