MSI Directory

Dear colleagues,

In a follow up to Provost Lavernia’s email in which he committed an additional $3M in one time funds for graduate enrollment growth, Vice Provost Haynes and I are delighted to provide additional information on the new UCI Minority Serving Institution (MSI) fellowship to advance inclusive excellence in graduate education at UCI. This fellowship provides a $10,000 top-off for newly admitted domestic doctoral and MFA students who have graduated from a federally designated Minority Serving Institution two-year college or four-year institution of higher education. The top-off is disbursed over a two-year period, in $5,000 increments. The purpose of this program is to yield high achieving college graduates to join and further diversify our graduate programs.

Nationally, UCI is distinctive for being a member of the prestigious American Association of Universities and a Minority Serving Institution. The campus is both a Hispanic Serving Institution and an Asian American Native American and Pacific Islander Serving Institution. The UCI MSI fellowship program will help our graduate programs grow and prepare future leaders that are both broadly diverse and committed to inclusive excellence.

The following steps are needed to nominate an admitted domestic doctoral or MFA student for a UCI Minority Serving Institution fellowship:

1. Confirm nominees earned or will earn an undergraduate degree from a Minority Serving Institution, a list of which is available here: https://inclusion.uci.edu/msi/msi-directory/.
2. Indicate on the Diversity Recruitment Fellowship form that the students attended an MSI and include the institution for verification. More information can be found at Graduate Division Diversity-Recruitment Fellowship. For questions, please contact Mariela Mendez
3. Top-offs will be awarded on a rolling basis until funds are exhausted.

The students awarded this funding will be asked by the Office of Inclusive Excellence to complete an annual survey on their graduate student experience.

In addition to the top-off program,  we will award 22 additional Eugene Cota-Robles fellowships. Please nominate your outstanding diversity admits. Applications are due Tuesday, 2/19, at noon.

For questions, please contact Daniel Fabrega (dfabrega@uci.edu), Manager of Graduate Preparation and Recruitment, in Graduate Division.

Sincerely,

Frances Leslie
Vice Provost for Graduate Education
Dean of the Graduate Division
Professor of Pharmacology and Anatomy & Neurobiology

Douglas M. Haynes
Vice Provost for Academic Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Director of ADVANCE, Professor of History