Environmental institute awarded $245,000 for fellowships

The Institute for Environmental Studies will receive $245,000 from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation over the next four years to support graduate students planning careers in conservation.

UW–Madison is one of six American universities chosen by the foundation to share $2.61 million in grants between now and 2004 for the Doris Duke Conservation Fellowship Program. The others are Duke, Cornell, Yale and the universities of Michigan and Montana.

Each Doris Duke conservation fellow will receive up to $32,000 toward tuition, an internship at a nonprofit conservation organization and educational loan repayment.

The strong national reputation of IES’s graduate programs and the fact that many of its alumni go into nonprofit or public-sector conservation work – a priority of the Duke foundation – helped the institute obtain the grant, says Barbara Borns, IES senior student services coordinator.

Introduced at three universities in 1997, Doris Duke Conservation Fellowships already have benefited more than 50 graduate students in environmental studies. The newest grants are expected to support an additional 75 students at the six participating institutions. The fellowships are specifically for students earning master’s degrees, and fellows are selected by their own universities.

“This will help us attract and keep outstanding graduate students in our programs,” says Borns, noting that lack of financial support sometimes prevents excellent students from pursuing graduate study in IES. “We expect this award to provide partial funding for at least three or four students each year.”

Doris Duke Conservation Fellowships are targeted at graduate students “who show outstanding promise as future leaders in nonprofit or governmental conservation in the United States,” according to foundation president Joan E. Spero. “Universities are chosen for the grants based on their superior interdisciplinary environmental programs and a commitment to educating conservation practitioners.”

With close to $1.6 billion in assets, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is among the largest philanthropies in the United States. The foundation, created in 1996, seeks to improve the quality of people’s lives by preserving natural environments, nurturing the arts, seeking cures for diseases and helping to protect children from abuse and neglect.

The Institute for Environmental Studies, established at UW–Madison in 1970, offers several interdisciplinary graduate degree and certificate programs. The institute has about 165 graduate students. Its 1,200 graduate-level alumni live and work throughout the United States and in more than 20 other countries.