Graduate Public Service Fellowship

GPS Fellowship Description

In partnership with the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education, the Haas Center for Public Service offers the Graduate Public Service (GPS) Fellowship as a space for graduate students to cultivate their skills, commitments, and identities as community-engaged scholars. 

The GPS Fellowship creates a supportive, transdisciplinary network of students who share an interest in public scholarship, scholar-activism, and community engagement. Through the fellowship experience, students participate in a community of practice designed to promote relational and reflective learning and a community of purpose that supports the explicit discussion of values and identities and the exploration and application of social, intellectual, and political commitments to scholarly practice. 

The GPS program embraces and encourages participants to bring their whole selves into the fellowship experience (including their personal experiences, values, and standpoints)  in order to nurture identities and commitments as community engaged scholars. Cohort activities emphasize collaborative learning, relational skill building, and reflection on values and positionality because such practices are essential for building trust and fostering equity-focused collaborations with community partners in ways that are transformational rather than transactional.

Beginning in 2023-24, the GPS program integrated a practicum experience in which Fellows serve in teams (with grad peers) on a collaborative, action-oriented research project with a local community-based organization or coalition partner. The experience is designed to provide Fellows with the opportunity to participate, from start to finish, in a research design process that is driven by the community partner’s interests, needs, or desires and that prioritizes core equity-based principles such as shared goals and values; a focus on community strengths (asset-based); equitable collaboration; collective benefit; trusting relationships; and accessible results. Fellows are expected to commit approximately 2 hours per week over the course of the academic year to the project. Fellows may express interest to participate in a project that addresses community-identified issues in one of four key areas: environmental justice, housing equity, educational equity, or health equity. 

GPS fellows receive a $3,000 stipend over the course of the academic year to support their participation in the fellowship and the fellowship-related research project. 

Whether you are interested in a future faculty position, or planning to pursue a non-academic career pathway, the GPS experience provides space to explore the intersection of your professional and community-engaged goals and to integrate public scholarship practices into your professional repertoire.

HOW TO APPLY

Applications for the GPS Fellowship are typically released in April for the following academic year.  Questions? Contact Clayton Hurd (churd@stanford.edu)