January 12, 2015. Release by Anne Wallin, U-M Dow Sustainability Fellows Program
Forty exceptional master’s and professional-degree students from nine University of Michigan (U-M) schools and colleges were recently named Dow Sustainability Fellows. These graduate students each receive $20,000 for their studies and become part of a growing collaborative community of scholars focused on interdisciplinary approaches to a broad array of sustainability challenges related to water, energy, transportation, built environment, climate change, food, health, and human behavior, among others. In addition to co-curricular activities and interactions with the Dow Sustainability Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellows, they will also complete an interdisciplinary team project with real-world relevance.
“We’re thrilled to welcome such a diverse group of students into the Dow Sustainability Fellows program,” says Don Scavia, Special Counsel to the President, who administers the program on the university’s behalf. “The best ideas and solutions evolve from a range of views and approaches, and that’s what this interdisciplinary fellowship is all about.”
The new fellows were selected from a distinguished group of nominees from eleven programs across the campus. Each U-M school/college was asked to nominate up to 10 candidates, and this group marks the third cohort of Dow Sustainability Master’s/Professional Fellows at the university (a list of alumni here). They will be with the program from January to December 2015. New fellows and their nominating schools are as follows:
- College of Engineering: Helen Hagos, Nadine Halabi, Selman Mujovic, Sean Murphy, Yash Shah.
- Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy: Mohamed Abbadi, Cassandra Baxter, Matthew Bishop, Michelle Hindman, Mark Kroening, Sneha Rao, Christopher Wolff.
- Institute for Social Research: Andy Zack.
- Law School: Christina Bonnani, Madeline Buck, Rachel Hampton, In Sung Hwang, Sarah Stellberg.
- School of Information: Rachel Jaffe, Alice Rhee.
- School of Natural Resources and the Environment: Jason Coleman, Alyssa Cudmore, Spencer Harbo, Remy Long, Dana Wall, Zeqi Zhu.
- School of Public Health: Tun (Max) Aung, Jillian Shotwell, Ashley Hill, Dan Bator.
- Stephen M. Ross School of Business: Joanna Herrmann, Marianna Kerppola, Daniel Patton, John Serron, Luiz Sodre.
- Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning: Olivia Lu-Hill, Adam Nault, Gaurav Sardana, Lindsey Von Seggern, Frank Romo.
Established through a six-year gift from The Dow Chemical Company, the Dow Sustainability Fellows program supports full-time U-M graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who are committed to finding interdisciplinary, actionable, and meaningful sustainability solutions on local-to-global scales. To foster high-impact collaborations across the university, the fellows program also includes a distinguished awards competition for applied sustainability projects that cut across disciplines and academic levels.