Lake Champlain Sea Grant Seeks Fellowship Partner Proposals
For the past three years, Lake Champlain Sea Grant has partnered with organizations in the Lake Champlain basin to support two-year fellowships. These unique early career training experiences for recent graduates from a variety of educational levels focus on priority issue areas that are relevant to the Lake Champlain Sea Grant Strategic Plan and align with interests and goals of partner organizations. These fellowships afford young professionals the opportunity to engage in targeted research that enhances their technical knowledge and allows them to build their career skills along with their professional networks.
“One of the central pillars of Sea Grant programs is our commitment to supporting young professionals as they enter the career force," said Kris Stepenuck, Associate Director of Lake Champlain Sea Grant. "These fellowships provide a unique opportunity for Lake Champlain Sea Grant to collaborate with partner organizations from across the Lake Champlain basin to enhance the knowledge, skills, and abilities of early career professionals to excel in STEM and related careers.”
Lake Champlain Sea Grant seeks to identify partner organizations to share support of two new fellows for 2022-2024. Partner organizations will be selected through a competitive process. Organizations, agencies, and institutions of higher education that operate within the Lake Champlain basin of New York and/or Vermont are eligible to respond to this opportunity.
Lake Champlain Sea Grant will accept applications from interested organizations until January 18, 2022. Learn more about the application process.
For each fellowship position, Lake Champlain Sea Grant will support $25,000 per year with federal funding from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for each of two years towards each fellow. Partner organizations are asked to commit at least an equal amount of non-federal funding to support stipends for the fellows. In recognition that not every potential partner organization will have $25,000 in non-federal funds available to commit annually as match, multiple organizations may apply collaboratively to support a single fellow in partnership with Lake Champlain Sea Grant.
Priority areas of focus for fellowship partner applications include: Indigenous knowledge, water policy, science communications, community engineering or landscape design, and coastal resilience. Learn more about the priority areas.
Applications will be reviewed by an independent panel that will make recommendations to the Lake Champlain Sea Grant Director about highest priority fellowship partnerships to pursue.
Once partner organizations are selected, Lake Champlain Sea Grant and partner organization(s) will facilitate a competitive application process to select a high caliber fellow. Each fellow will be employed either through the University of Vermont or by the partner organization. This will be determined in cooperation with the partner organizations.
Lake Champlain Sea Grant will provide fellows with professional development opportunities, tapping into the rich collection of resources available through the University of Vermont, SUNY-Plattsburgh, and the National Sea Grant Network, along with those of local, state, regional, and federal agencies and organizations.
Learn more about Lake Champlain Sea Grant’s request for fellowship partners: https://go.uvm.edu/fellowshippartners.