Latest revision as of 03:53, 8 April 2010

Discussion: ECE Fellowship Initiative (details here)

A movement has started which could result in fellowship funding for every incoming Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

Some ECE faculty have proposed raising an endowment to financially support every new PhD student with a full 1.5-year fellowship. Strong support for this motion must be displayed in order for it to prove successful. With enough voice behind this initiative, this proposal could challenge competing outlets for financial support (such as building construction) whose impact on the reputation of Purdue ECE is indirect at best. See this document for more details.

Do you feel that fellowship support for Ph.D. students is financially worthwhile?

Will this benefit Purdue's long-term vision?

Make your voice heard! Discuss your thoughts here.

I express strong support for this movement. I feel that, given the options for endowment support, no better impact on the quality of Purdue ECE's graduate program could be made than to draw superior students. Educational funding is an extremely important portion of an offer to incoming students, and is attractive to even the most promising aspiring Ph.D.'s. The worldwide reputation of Purdue is ultimately made by the students, while state-of-the-art facilities or other popular targets of funding have less influence on the power of a Purdue degree. My dismissal of the importance of labs/buildings/equipment may reflect my status as an image processing engineer who only uses a desktop computer for all of my research, however I feel that even solid state programs could see tangible impact by reallocating of funds directly to students. What other thoughts are there on this issue? Huffmalm

I must say I would be very happy to financially contribute to such an endowment. --Mboutin 14:51, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The fellowship support would be great as many students simply don't come back to grad school just because they can't fund it initially.By providing the money, I believe we will attract the brains in each field and thus improve the reputation of Purdue ECE because this school is known for its talent and not simply for its infrastructure.

Purdue's long term vision, of being one of the best, can only be reached by having great research and great programs.By having great PhD students we ensure that students will have great professors too.

Thing is will the amount of the financial endowment determine the number of PhD students admitted? Will there be a continuous supply of funds for such an initiative?

• Since this would be an endowment, the funding should be available forever. -pm

Just curious: where would this money be coming from: research grants and the state?Coz' it's certainly alot!!

• Endowments come from donations. -pm

It would be really cool if such a thing happened and would certainly make Purdue stand out more than the rest. Anshita Kumar

Since an undergrad Engineering degree can land you a good job with good pay, I think many ECE students have a much harder time deciding if grad school is worth it, with money being a larger factor than most will admit. Being able to guarantee funding for PhD students through a Purdue ECE endowment would be incredible, and would certainly increase the quality of the PhD students (while making it much harder to get into the program :} ). User:masonz

It would be really awesome to have fellowships for all incoming PhD students. I think the main reason Purdue loses out on good students is when they receive fellowships from other universities and a default teaching assistantship at Purdue.

Who should be contacted for further information about this?

HKN. I believe they are the ones who are going to try to set this up.

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