Graduate School

Graduate Community Fellows Program

Community Fellows group The Community Fellows program is not accepting applications for the 2024-2025 academic year. Designed to foster support for graduate student community, the program has run for eight successful years with 87 Community Fellows who contributed in valuable ways to their communities of peers. The Division of Campus Life Centers and Departments now continues this work through dedicated staff positions, which help advance the graduate student experience as a center of their Campus Life Roadmap.

Community Fellows identify areas of need, and they propose initiatives that help contribute to the graduate experience at Brown. Community Fellows develop valuable leadership skills, while they offer programming that contributes to a sense of connectedness among graduate students.

What does a Graduate Community Fellow do?

Design and implement community-building initiatives for graduate students. Past areas have included: Health & Wellness, Disability Community, International Community, Race & Social Justice, Family Friendly, LGBTQ+ Community, Master’s Student Community, and U-FLI (Undocumented, First-Generation, and Low-Income) Community. Students can also propose their own area.
Receive peer feedback and guidance from the Graduate School staff and campus partners as they create and implement their initiatives.
Provide feedback and assessment on initiatives through mid-year and end-of-year program evaluation.

Initiatives may be speaker events, seminar series, networking events, community gatherings, discussion groups, workshops, a map, or a collection of resources. Initiatives may build upon previous initiatives and/or be entirely new. If participants wish to build on previous programming, then they should use their applications to address how they are expanding upon previous initiatives. Each initiative should aim to strengthen the graduate student community, by celebrating diversity, promoting inclusion, and connecting individuals across disciplines.

In addition, each Fellow receives an award of $2000 for one academic year and Fellows (in either pairs or small groups) receive up to $1500 to fund initiatives in the areas they represent. International students who are Community Fellows should register with FNIS before receiving any payments and should note award amounts are liable for taxes unless there are tax treaty benefits available, which differ according to the student’s home country.

When do the Graduate Community Fellows implement their initiatives?

Graduate Community Fellows are selected in early October and will have the remainder of the academic year to design and implement their initiatives.