NEW: Brown + URI Students Net Prestigious EPA Awards
Friday, November 30, 2012
Two Rhode Island college students have netted prestigious fellowship awards from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Rachel Nagy at Brown University and Eric Kretsch of the University of Rhode Island are among the 18 undergraduate and graduate students in environmental studies at New England colleges and universities who received a total of up to $783,600 in research fellowships from the US EPA. The students at colleges in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire were among 127 students nationwide to receive at total of up to $5.3 million from EPA to pay for their tuition this year.
Nagy's fellowship will cover her graduate-level work on ecosystem services of secondary forests in the Mata Atlântica of Brazil. Kretsch's is an undergraduate award.
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The New England students included four undergrads who received 2012 Greater Research Opportunities fellowships and 14 doctoral students awarded 2012 Science to Achieve Results, or STAR, fellowships. These fellowships encourage leadership in environmental science, research, restoration, pollution prevention and sustainability.
“These awards give students from around New England and the country a chance to pursue research and schooling that might otherwise be inaccessible,” said Curt Spalding, regional administrator of EPA’s New England office. “The fellowships are often critical stepping stones for students who may become accomplished scientists and engineers making significant contributions to the field of environmental protection.”
Among the doctoral students in New England, who won a total of up to $42,000 each for this year and each of the next two years, are four from Massachusetts; one from Rhode Island; seven from Connecticut and two from New Hampshire. The four undergraduate awards, for up to $48,900 each this year and again for each of the next two years, went to students in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Supporting studies in environmental fields
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Greater Research Opportunities Fellowship program, which is part of the national effort to ensure that the US continues to graduate students ready to meet environmental science, engineering, and policy challenges. The program encourages promising students to pursue careers in environmental fields and to continue their education beyond the baccalaureate level.
Supporting graduate environmental study for masters and doctoral students, the STAR fellowship program provides a steady stream of environmental specialists that are meeting society’s environmental challenges by performing new environmental research in engineering and in the physical, biological, health, and social sciences.
Alumni of the fellowship programs often go on to do significant work in the field.
Applications for the fiscal 2013 program are open. Applicants for the Greater Research Opportunities have until Dec. 5 to apply.
More information on EPA graduate and undergraduate research fellowships, go here.
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