Faculty-Student Research Award (FSRA)
The Graduate School is pleased to provide support for faculty projects through the Faculty-Student Research Award (FSRA) Program. The wide variety of faculty research, scholarship, and creative projects on campus provide unique opportunities to mentor and support graduate students. The AY 26-27 FSRA will provide $15,000 to support a faculty project that directly involves graduate students.
Faculty seeking support for a project that does not directly involve graduate students should apply for the Independent Scholarship, Research, and Creativity Award (ISRCA) which is offered through the Office of the Provost and the Division of Research. Students looking for support for their dissertation research can apply for student fellowships and awards.
Eligibility: Faculty eligible to apply for the FSRA include full-time tenured and tenure-track (TTK) faculty members and full-time professional track (PTK) faculty who are Full or Associate Members of Graduate Faculty and serve on graduate student thesis committees at the University of Maryland. The proposed project must be a faculty project that involves and benefits one or more graduate students.
Deadline: The application deadline is Wednesday, January 6, 2027, by 5:00 pm.
Guidelines and Application Process
FSRA FAQs
Examples of graduate student involvement include, but are not limited to:
- financial support of a graduate student, such as hiring a graduate student to perform duties associated with the project or paying for travel-related expenses for a graduate student;
- direct graduate student involvement in the research, scholarship, or creative activity (e.g., co-authorship, data collection, data analysis);
- active mentorship in support of a student’s academic and professional success.
Examples of acceptable use of funds include, but are not limited to:
- financial support for a graduate student by hiring them to perform project-related duties in accordance with university policy;
- project-related equipment and/or material
- travel expenses incurred by the applicant and/or graduate students.
- In a limited number of exceptional cases (e.g., where a project would not otherwise be feasible), FSRA funds ($5,000 maximum) can be allocated as a summer stipend for an unfunded faculty member.
The costs associated with hiring a graduate student and/or release from teaching vary across campus. Applicants should discuss plans for the use of the award funds with their department chair. Departments may provide additional support for the proposal, at the chair’s discretion.
FSRA funds cannot replace funding under a grant or contract, although supplemental funding is allowed to pursue research that is clearly outside the scope of the grant or contract. If external support for the project is received for the same period, the FSRA will be forfeited.
Full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members and full-time professional track faculty who are Full or Associate Members of Graduate Faculty and serve on graduate student thesis and dissertation committees at the University of Maryland are eligible to apply.
The award period is for AY 27-28 which begins on July 1, 2027. Funds will be available in July 2027.
The proposal must be a faculty project and must directly involve graduate students. In most cases, the faculty member will be the research advisor for the student(s) involved in the project and the current or prospective chair or co-chair of their thesis committee.
Faculty are eligible to receive a Faculty-Student Research Award once in any three-year-period. (A faculty member who received the Faculty-Student Support Award in AY 2024-2025 would first be eligible to receive another FSRA in AY 2027-28, which is the January 2027 competition cycle.) Eligible faculty may submit one application.
Award recipients must submit a one-page report on the progress or results of the project within three months of the completion of the award period using this Graduate School FSRA Report Form. The report should include which graduate students were involved in the project and how they benefitted as a result of the project. Additionally, we ask awardees to submit a copy of the final product when it becomes available.
Award recipients and students supported by the award should acknowledge the Graduate School FSRA in publications or other materials supported by the award: “This project was supported by the University of Maryland Graduate School Faculty-Student Research Award.”
The FSRA selection committee comprises faculty from various disciplines across the campus. Please present your proposal in language and a format understandable by scholars who are nonspecialists. Committee members will evaluate proposals based on the following evaluation criteria:
- Impact/significance of the research project
- Feasibility of the proposal as presented
- Clarity & completeness of the presentation
- Level of graduate student involvement (direct experience and/or financial support)
FSRA recipients may be asked by the Graduate School to serve on an Award Selection Committee in subsequent years.
A complete application must include the following:
Project Description (up to three pages, single spaced, 12-point font, one-inch margins) The project description should be written for non-specialists. It should include a description of the project; significance and expected impact of the project; work completed to date; timetable for completion; site where the project will be conducted; methods or creative procedures to be used; and anticipated deliverables (book, technical report, journal article, paper for scholarly meeting, performance, recording, sculpture, etc.).
The bibliography does not count as part of the page length of the proposal.
Roles & Responsibilities for this Project: (1 page, 12-point font, one-inch margins) Graduate Student’s Role: Provide a detailed account of how graduate student(s) will be involved in this project. Describe what specifically the student(s) will do. Provide details about how the student will benefit (ie, professional benefits, skill development, and/or co-authorship, financial support).
Faculty Role: Define your role in this project. Provide information about how mentorship will be incorporated into the project.
Provide a proposed budget of up to $15,000.
In a limited number of cases (e.g., where a project would not otherwise be feasible), 1/3 of the FSRA funding can be allocated as a summer stipend for an unfunded faculty member.
- Curriculum Vitae (four-page limit).
- Letter of Support from the Department Chair
The Awards Portal will prompt the department chair (or chair designee) to submit their Letter of Support. The Letter of support should include details about how funding for this faculty project will benefit graduate student mentorship and/or graduate student support. Also, the letter should provide information about the discipline and/or the project that will help a multi-disciplinary committee evaluate the proposal.
The applicant should prepare items 1-5 as 5 PDF files and submit to the Awards Portal at terpengage.umd.edu/gsawards/s/ before the application deadline. The department chair should submit the letter of support to the Awards Portal within one week of the request.
Please direct any questions to Program Director Robyn Kotzker, Office of Funding Opportunities, Graduate School (x5-0281; rkotzker@umd.edu).
Award Recipients
College Of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Erich Battistin, Agricultural and Resource Economics
Jared Wilmoth, Environmental Science and Technology
College of Arts and Humanities
Jill Bradbury, Theatre and Performance Studies
Emily Egan, Art History and Archaeology
Elisa Gironzetti, Spanish Language and Literature
Irina Muresanu, Music Education
Hailey Otis, Communication
Jordana Saggese, Art History and Archaeology
Psyche Williams-Forson, American Studies
Smith School of Business
Waverly Ding, Decision, Operations, and Information Technologies
Xiaojia Guo, Business and Management
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Emel Filiz Ozbay, Economics
Laixiang Sun, Geographical Sciences
William Witheridge, Economics
College of Education
Lucas Butler, Human Development
Natasha Cabrera, Human Development
Claudia Galindo, Teaching, Learning, Policy and Leadership
Hong Jiao, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
Tracy Sweet, Human Development
School of Public Health
Heather Amato, Environmental Health Sciences
M Bishop, Family Science
Mika Hamer, Health Policy Analysis and Evaluation
Amy Morgan, Family Science
Shelby Steuart, Public Health Practice and Policy
Paula Strassle, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
School of Public Policy
Susan Parker, Policy Studies
College Of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Qin Wang, Nutrition and Food Science
College of Arts and Humanities
Holly Brewer, History
Valentine Hacquard, Linguistics
Chad Infante, English
Sahar Khamis, Communication
Nana Kwame Osei Fordjour, Communication
Bayley Marquez, American Studies
Shelbi Meissner, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Smith School of Business
Manmohan Aseri, Decision, Operations, and Information Technologies
Amna Kirmani, Marketing
Michel Wedel, Marketing
Siva Viswanathan, Decision, Operations, and Information Technologies
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Maureen Cropper, Economics
Wade Jacobsen, Criminology and Criminal Justice
Ginger Jin, Economics
Edward Lemay, Psychology
Anna Li, Psychology
Yusuf Masatlioglu, Economics
College of Education
Loren Jones, Teaching, Learning, Policy and Leadership
Kelly Mix, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
Clark School of Engineering
Erika Moore, Bioengineering
School of Public Health
Typhanye Dyer, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Hongjie Liu, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Amy Sapkota, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health
Edmond Shenassa, Maternal and Child Health Sciences
Kirsten Stoebenau, Behavioral and Community Health
College of Arts and Humanities
Adriane Fang, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Nan Jiang, Second Language Acquisition
Maura Keefe, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Jiyoun Kim, Communication
Caitlin Marshall, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Erkut Ozbay, Economics
Andrew Sweeting, Economics
College of Education
Shenika Hankerson, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Laura Mahalingappa, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Melinda Martin-Beltran, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Colleen O’Neal, Higher Education
Rachel Romeo, Human Development
Sehrish Shikapurya, Higher Education
Cixin Wang, Higher Education
James A. Clark School of Engineering
Avik Dutt, Mechanical Engineering
Jenna Mueller, Bioengineering
Hannah Zierden, Chemical Engineering
Robert H. Smith School of Business
Wedad Elmaghraby, Business and Management
Rebecca Hann, Business and Management
II-Horn Hann, Business and Management
Albert Kyle, Business and Management
Rellie Rozin, Business and Management
Myeong-Gu Seo, Business and Management
Subrahmaniam Tangirala, Business and Management
AY 2023-2024
College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Cory Smith, Agricultural and Resource Economics
College of Arts and Humanities
Emily Egan, Art History and Archaeology
Bronson Hui, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Sarah Pearson, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Karin Rosemblatt, History
Stefano Villani, History
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Ernesto Calvo, Government and Politics
Julia Chuang, Sociology
Kathleen Cunningham, Government and Politics
Sebastian Galiani, Economics
Meredith Gore, Geographical Sciences
Eric Hoover, Hearing and Speech Sciences
Yi Ting Huang, Hearing and Speech Sciences
Ethan Kaplan, Economics
Yiqun Xie, Geographical Sciences
College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
Nikolas Francis, Biology
Mercedes Taylor, Chemistry
Andrei Vedernikov, Chemistry
Haizhao Yang, Mathematics
College of Education
Veronica Kang, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
Melanie Killen, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
Jioni Lewis, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
Rossina Liu, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Campbell Scribner, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Min Wang, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
Taylor Woodman, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
James A. Clark School of Engineering
Po-Yen Chen, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Jin-Oh Hahn, Mechanical Engineering
Carlos Rios Ocampo, Materials and Science Engineering
Robert H. Smith School of Business
Trevor Foulk, Business and Management
Jui Ramaprasad, Business and Management
School of Public Health
Jessica Fish, Family Science
Sarah Glancy, Kinesiology
Rebecca Gourevitch, Health Policy and Management
Shannon Jette, Kinesiology
Xuanzi Qin, Health Policy and Management
AY 2022-2023
College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Andrew Baldwin, Environmental Science and Technology
Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, Environmental Science and Technology
Qin Wang, Nutrition and Food Science
Zhengguo Xiao, Animal and Avian Sciences
College of Architecture
Julie Gabrielli, Architecture
Clara Irazabal, Architecture
College of Arts and Humanities
Lindsey Anderson, Communication
Maria Beliaeva Solomon, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Dora Hanninen, Music
Abigail McEwen, Art History
Kendra Portier, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Pierre DeLeo, Economics
Michael Dougherty, Psychology
Ginger Jin, Economics
Anna Li, Psychology
Rochelle Newman, Hearing and Speech Sciences
Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman, Anthropology
Lauren Porter, Criminology and Criminal Justice
College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
Kan Cao, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics
Anahi Espindola, Entomology
Niranjan Ramachandran, Mathematics
College of Education
Lucas Butler, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
Natasha Cabrera, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
Jason Chow, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
Kelli Cummings, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
Jing Liu, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Richard Prather, Human Development and Qualitative Methodology
Margaret Walker, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Zeena Zakharia, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
College of Information Studies
Tamara Clegg, Information Studies
James A. Clark School of Engineering
Cinzia Cirillo, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Robert H. Smith School of Business
Rajshree Agarwal, Management and Operations
Vijaya Venkataramani, Management and Operations
Kunpeng Zhang, Decisions, Operations and Technology
School of Public Health
Cher Dallal, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Hongjie Liu, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Mona Mittal, Family Science
Sushant Ranadive, Kinesiology
Edmond Shenassa, Family Science
Kellee White, Health Science and Management
Dahai Yue, Health Science
School of Public Policy
Nancy Gallagher, Policy Studies
AY 2021-2022
College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Neslihan Uler, Agricultural and Resource Economics
College of Arts and Humanities
Marielis Garcia, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies
Sun Young Lee, Communication
Eric Pacuit, Philosophy
Shawn Parry-Giles, Communication
David Sartorius, History
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Johanna Birnir, Government and Politics
Shannon Carcelli, Government and Politics
Andrea Chronis-Tuscano, Psychology
George Hambrecht, Anthropology
Scott Kastner, Government and Politics
Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels, Anthropology
Lilliana Mason, Government and Politics
Joseph Richardson, African American Studies
Tracy Riggins, Psychology
Yasmeen Shah, Hearing and Speech Sciences
Janelle Wong, Government and Politics
Chenyu Yang, Economics
College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
Leah Dodson, Chemistry
Heidi Fisher, Biology
Quentin Gaudry, Biology
Mong-Han Huang, Geology
Antony Jose, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics
Michael Miller, Astronomy
College of Education
Susan De La Paz, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
Betty Malen, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Colleen O’Neal, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
Cixin Wang, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education
James A. Clark School of Engineering
Edward Eisenstein, Bioengineering
Huang Chiao Huang, Bioengineering
Dongxia Liu, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Silvina Matysiak, Bioengineering
Alba Torrents, Biology
Philip Merrill College of Journalism
Linda Steiner, Journalism
Robert H. Smith School of Business
Serguey Braguinsky, Management and Operations
Jessica Clark, Decisions, Operations and Technology
Raghu Raghavan, Decisions, Operations and Technology
Russell Wermers, Finance
School of Public Health
Cheryl Knott, Health Science
Devon Payne-Sturges, Environmental Health Sciences
Amy Sapkota, Environmental Health Sciences
Kirsten Stoebenau, Health Science
Min Wang, Behavioral and Community Health
School of Public Policy
Robert Sprinkle, Policy Studies
AY 2020-2021
College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Maile Neel, Plant Science and Landscape Architecture
Diana Obanda, Nutrition and Food Science
Abani Pradhan, Nutrition and Food Science
Louis Preonas, Agricultural Resource Economics
Stephanie Yarwood, Environmental Science and Technology
Yanjin Zhang, Veterinary Medicine
College of Arts and Humanities
Melissa Blanco Borelli, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies
Sahar Khamis, Communication
Ji Youn Kim, Communication
Eric Kutz, Music
Lisa Nathans, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Eunhee Lee, Economics
Karen O’Brien, Psychology
Nolan Pope, Economics
College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
Catherine Carr, Biology
Eric Haag, Biology
Benjamin Kedem, Mathematics
Partha Lahiri, Mathematics
Zhongchi Liu, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics
Peter Nemes, Chemistry
Megan Newcombe, Geology
Sarah Penniston-Dorland, Geology
Myles Poulin, Chemistry
Margaret Scull, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics
College of Education
Patricia Alexander, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
David Blazar, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership
Gregory Hancock, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
Kelly Mix, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
Geetha Ramani, Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
James A. Clark School of Engineering
Carol Espy-Wilson, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Guangbin Li, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Katharina Maisel, Bioengineering
Taylor Woehl, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Robert H. Smith School of Business
Subrahmaniam Tangirala, Business and Management
School of Public Health
Elizabeth Aparicio, Health Science
Dina Borzekowski, Behavioral and Community Health
Mariana Falconier, Family Science
Tianzhou Ma, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Jae Kun Shim, Kinesiology
Julia Steinberg, Family Science
School of Public Policy
Susan Parker, Policy Studies
Yueming Qiu, Policy Studies
Alec Worsnop, Policy Studies