Two graduate fellowships were recently established under the name of former Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams.
The Rosenfield-Abrams fellowships will be given to two UCLA doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences, and will include $9,000 to cover in-state fees and an $18,000 stipend.
The money for the fellowships was given as part of a $300,000 endowment from the Ann C. Rosenfield Fund.
The fund had given multiple donations to the university before, said attorney David Leveton, who manages the fund and is a former student of Abrams.
Continuing graduate students in eligible fields can start applying for the new fellowships for the 2008-2009 academic year. The students are required to be full-time students and need to advance to candidacy in order to qualify for the award, according to the press release.
Leveton said that as Abrams’ time as acting chancellor drew to a close, he and Abrams began thinking about how to give back to the university and decided to create the fellowships.
“I think it’s only fitting and proper that a fellowship be established to honor (Abrams) for the wonderful work he’s done and for his entire academic career at UCLA, starting with his involvement teaching evidence at the law school to the pinnacle of being acting chancellor,” he added.
Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, vice chancellor and dean of the graduate division, said that procuring funds for graduate education, particularly doctoral studies, is crucial for the health and success of the university.
“We recognized that we needed to put additional effort into securing more funds for graduate support,” she added.
The fellowship is an extension of the Ensuring Academic Excellence campaign that UCLA launched in the 1990s in that it seeks to provide for financial support for graduate studies.
The campaign seeks to raise $250 million in funds to, according to its Web site, “attract top-flight scholars and students in the face of widening funding disparities between elite public research universities and private institutions.”
Fellowships for doctoral students are particularly important, Mitchell-Kernan said, because they are kept out of the labor market for so many years by their studies.
She said fellowships in the humanities and social sciences can be more difficult to find than in other disciplines, and attracting doctoral students can contribute to the quality of the faculty.
“The quality of our faculty depends a lot on the quality of our graduate students because they are actively engaged in supporting the research productivity of the faculty,” she said.