Education Activities
The Next Generation
Career Services
Education Contact
Inés Cifuentes, PhD
Manager, Education and Career Services
2000 Florida Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009-1277
Phone: +1 202 777 7508
Fax: +1 202 328 0566
E-mail: icifuentes@agu.org
Student Travel Grants
Student Travel Grants are available for a limited number of students planning to attend annual and biannual AGU meetings. This program provides financial assistance to U.S. and international young scientists and students who have little or no support from research contracts or grants, and who are presenting for the first time an oral/poster presentation as first author at the meeting. Application requirements and funding amounts vary by meeting.
Procedure for Selecting AGU Student Travel Grant Recipients
In a perfect world, we'd be able to give every student travel grant applicant an award; however, AGU has to make the tough decision as to who receives an award and who doesn't. Though it's a tough choice (frequently an extremely tough one), we hope that it's as equitable as it can be. The student applicants are ranked according to the following criteria and point system:
Current level of support
2: less than $6,000/year
1: between $6,000 and $12,000/year
0: more than $12,000/year
Education level
2: undergraduate or within 1 year of finishing PhD
1: Masters and PhD students (except those within 1 year of finishing)
The student applicants are then sorted by their rank. The ranking favors PhD students within 1 year of finishing who are at less well endowed universities as well as undergraduate students, because in almost all cases their current level of support is less than $6,000/year.
AGU's Education manager, Inés Cifuentes, then reviews each applicant's information to select a pool of candidates that is 50% women, about one third from outside the US, well distributed among the sections and focus groups (i.e. not all hydrology), and a good mixture of undergraduate and graduate students. Their statements about the "Benefit of Attendance" and "Career Goals" are used to identify those students who have never attended an international meeting as well as those who have a specific purpose in attending the meeting in addition to presenting their research, i.e. exploring graduate school or post-doctoral opportunities.
The Education manager then sends the list of possible candidates as well as the entire applicant list to a subcommittee of AGU's Committee on Education and Human Resources who make the final determination of the student travel grant recipients.