/ January 27, 2022/

WSGC graduate fellowships at the University of Washington are focused on supporting Ph.D. students in STEM fields related to NASA activities.

Requirements for student applicants

  • Must be a U.S. citizen
  • Enrollment in a Ph.D. program at the UW starting no later than Autumn 2023
  • Enrollment in a STEM discipline aligned with NASA interests as outlined above
  • Interest and ability to participate in WSGC activities aligned with the selected technical area (details on our current technical areas are on the UW Graduate Fellowships page)

Don’t forget to have your faculty advisor complete the faculty support form. We cannot review your application until both your application form and your advisor’s support form have been completed.

Deadline

  • June 30, 2023

About the application

Before completing this form, please read the following information regarding the structure of our application.

Washington NASA Space Grant acknowledges that many application processes in higher education may perpetuate the inequities that their programs are intended to alleviate. To that end, letters of recommendation have been removed from our application processes. This blog post, written when we removed letters of recommendation from our undergraduate applications, provides detailed information on how we came to this decision.

Additionally, many applications do not make the evaluation criteria clear. There are often requirements that rely on students having a certain amount of cultural capital or knowledge of how to take a rhetorical approach to their person statements. To that end, each short essay prompt in this application will include a statement of exactly what that prompt is intended to contribute to your application and how it will be evaluated.

Please see the work of James Warren as one example of how undergraduate application essay prompts and subsequent evaluation can disadvantage low income and minoritized students.

We thank you for your application.

Application form

Applicant information

Click or drag a file to this area to upload.
PDFs only.
Your advisor will receive an email notification asking them to complete the faculty support for, so please ensure you have correctly entered their email address here.

Lived experience

This prompt is intended to give our evaluators some general information about you as a person and student! This is also an opportunity for you to tell us anything about yourself we might not glean from the other components of the application. This component will be evaluated based on the ability of the applicant to describe 1) how they might benefit from being a part of the Space Grant community, 2) the ways in which they hope to contribute to building community within Space Grant, or 3) both items 1 and 2.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself, why you are interested in this fellowship, and the ways in which you envision being about to benefit and/or contribute to being a part of the Space Grant community.

Academic and career goals

This prompt is intended to provide sufficient information for our evaluators to determine how closely your interests and goals align with NASA initiatives. As a reminder, WSGC can support students in a variety of STEM disciplines including astronomy, biology, and physics; Earth, space, and environmental sciences; aeronautics and astronautics; computer science and engineering; electrical, mechanical, chemical, and systems engineering.
Please provide a brief (200 - 350 word) summary of your academic and career goals. Include information about any current research projects as well as your future plans.

Technical area selection and interest

This section allows you indicate the technical areas you would like to contribute to as a part of this fellowship as well as provide an explanation for your selection. Responses will be evaluated based on the detail provided. Information about previous experience is welcome but not required.

Students applying for this opportunity must have interests aligned in one of the following technical areas currently supported by Space Grant activities:

  • CubeSats
  • High altitude (scientific) balloons
  • Rocketry
  • Lunar rover development
  • Remote sensing
  • Science Mission Directorate engagement
Please select no more than 2.
Please provide a brief (200-350 word) summary of your interest in your selected technical area.

Supplemental materials

This section is optional but intended to allow for other methods of expression outside of short answer prompts. Feel free to upload any relevant files that support your responses. However, please note this is not intended as as place for you to add more to your written prompts if you run out of space within the form.
Click or drag a file to this area to upload.
Click or drag a file to this area to upload.