In his first year as an MIT graduate student, Asegun Henry chose to do research that could lead to better materials for energy conversion — such as nanostructured thermoelectrics that could convert a vehicle's waste heat back into useful electricity for improved efficiency. However, his work in nanoscale heat transport phenomena did not promise the kind of immediate results required by a traditional research grant. Luckily, a graduate fellowship allowed Henry to pursue his interest.

"The fellowship allowed me to get into some of those more fundamental questions without having to worry about justifying it up front. I was able to branch out and bring new expertise to the group," he said of the nanoengineering laboratory where he works. "It turned out to be extremely fruitful in the end."

Mechanical Engineering Professor Gang Chen, who advises Henry, said, "He has done great work. His research results will help us design more efficient thermal systems," with applications that include thermoelectric power generation and microprocessor design. "If it were not for his first-year fellowship, I would have had difficulty picking him up as a student."

As government funding of research continues to shrink, and as competition among universities for the best students intensifies, MIT must take aggressive action to ensure graduate student support and to maintain the excellence of its graduate programs.

A great intellectual resource

Graduate students comprise more than 60 percent of the student population at MIT. Whether collaborating with faculty on research, or teaching and mentoring undergraduates, graduate students are crucial to the strength and integrity of the Institute. The advances they make in their fields while at MIT greatly enhance its reputation as a leader in education and scientific research. Some indicators:

• MIT leads all universities in enrolling holders of prestigious National Science Foundation Fellowships; and MIT regularly ranks at or very near the top in U.S. National Research Council rankings of graduate programs that focus on engineering, the natural sciences, and selected social sciences.
• Private support for fellowships ensures that discovery and exploration continue in all fields, regardless of how fashionable a particular topic is in the short term. It guarantees that MIT will continue to attract the top minds as graduate students, as well as the faculty who want to work with those students.

Professor Eric Grimson, head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), relies on fellowships not only to attract the world's top students, but also to bring in those he calls "'the flyers' — the students that are very different. They're not going to fit a traditional RA (research assistantship), but boy, if we could get them here for a year and get them hooked in, they could just be spectacular."

One such student entered the EECS graduate program with "very little programming background, but a ton of experience in medical imaging," said Grimson. "Her fellowship let her spend a good portion of her first year taking classes and coming up to speed in a new research area without feeling the pressure of doing an RA." The student's work in computational anatomy produced tools that can analyze the evolution of disease. "She's now a critical research scientist at one of the top medical schools in the nation," says Grimson.

He points out the importance of nontraditional students, and the support they receive, to the department as a whole. "EECS is dramatically shifting its research attentions into new fields — one in three faculty is currently doing research that is medically or biologically related — and to do that we need a support mechanism conducive to attracting and retaining a new breed of student."

The critical role of fellowships

MIT's need for graduate fellowships, particularly first-year support, will continue to grow for the following reasons.

• Government funding for RAs fluctuates, making it a less dependable source of financial support than in the past. At the same time, the cost of an RA to a research grant is high, and faculty hesitate to use scarce research funds for first-year students, who generally spend more time in the classroom than the lab;
• Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and other top schools are sharply boosting their science and technology offerings and competing with MIT for the top candidates. Without the ability to financially enable these top graduate students to attend MIT, the Institute would be at a competitive disadvantage; and
• A student's ability to study in a particular field and begin working on thesis material during the first year hinges on financial support outside of RAs and teaching assistantships.

Help support graduate fellowships

There are two basic ways to support graduate students through fellowships: endowments* and expendable* gifts. Endowing a fellowship honors donors in the same way as a named chair, while at the same time ensuring MIT's strength.

• An endowed fund is permanent. A portion of the returns from the investment of such funds is allocated each year to the purpose designated by the donor. If you create such a fund, you may give it any name you choose.
• An expendable fund is one from which dollars are used on an as-needed or annual basis without preserving a minimum dollar level. Both principal and income may be spent.