Revision as of 15:54, 3 March 2010

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?

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

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