Graduate student opportunities
Over the past decade, Stanford has expanded opportunities for graduate students to connect their academic work with community engagement and social impact, reflecting a broader commitment to public purpose in graduate education.
This collection of resources is intended to help graduate students navigate these opportunities and highlight the collective efforts that support Stanford’s commitment to serving the public good. The programs below are specifically for graduate students. Many undergraduate programs are also open to graduate students; to find those, visit the Opportunities page and use the "Open to" filter to refine your search.
Opportunities for community engagement, public benefit, and social impact
Bill Lane Center for the American West
Shultz Energy Fellowship
The Shultz Fellowship creates an avenue for Stanford students interested in energy to participate in influential, paid internships with energy-related government organizations in the United States.
Contact: Katie Taflan Cerneka
Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE)
Teaching Race Graduate Fellowship
Graduate fellows will receive a modest stipend for participating in remote and in-person workshops exploring theory and praxis in anti-racist pedagogy, with a special emphasis on concrete strategies for supporting difficult conversations in the classroom.
Contact: Annie Atura Bushnell
Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS)
Small Grants Program
Funding up to $4,000
As a leading research center, Stanford PACS offers a number of small grants in the fall and spring quarters to support student research related to philanthropy and civil society in pursuit of positive social change.
Contact: Lisa Overbey
ChEM-H
Freeman Spogli Institute
Graduate School of Education
Stanford-Sequoia K-12 Research Collaborative Research Assistantship
Multi-quarter, part-time
These mostly funded research assistantships have doctoral students working with school district leaders in nine school districts that neighbor Stanford campus including Redwood City and Sequoia Union on partnership research related to district priorities.
Contact: Diana Mercado-Garcia
Graduate School of Education and John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities
Haas Center for Public Service
Graduate Public Service Fellowship
Multi-quarter, full-time; $3,000 stipend
This year-long program awards fellowships to graduate students who want to explore and prepare for professorial or other careers in which they will engage in scholar-activism, community-based research, or public scholarship.
Contact: Clayton Hurd
Research as Praxis Workshop Series
This workshop is for graduate students interested in learning more about and developing competency in community-engaged and social impact scholarship.
Contact: Clayton Hurd
King Center on Global Development
Journeys of Inquiry
The program provides opportunities to highly motivated students for experiential learning and conducting research in low- and middle-income countries.
Contact: Mara Violanti
McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society
McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society Graduate Fellowship
The fellowship creates a supportive community in which fellows will examine ethical questions specific to their research, and that more broadly relate to their roles as scholars and as citizens.
Contact: Collin Chen
Native American Cultural Center
Stanford Bio-X
Stanford Ecopreneurship
Stanford Impact Founder in Ecopreneurship Fellowships and Prizes (SIF-Eco)
The SIF-Eco Fellowship provides Stanford graduates $110,000 in funding along with advising support to fellows who want to start a high-impact venture that addresses a pressing environmental need.
Contact: Adelaide Renee Coman
Stanford Engineering
Stanford GSB Center for Social Innovation
Social Management Immersion Fund (SMIF)
MBA students who secure summer internships with nonprofits, government agencies, or social-purpose businesses can apply for a SMIF fellowship to receive financial support.
Contact: Linda Gerard
Stanford Housing Equity Project
Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
HAI Student Affinity Groups
HAI Student Affinity Groups are small teams of interdisciplinary students who have a shared interest in a topic related to the development or study of human-centered AI.
Contact: Christine Raval
Stanford Impact Labs
Postdoctoral Fellowship
2-year fellowship
This fellowship is a training and professional development program for postdoctoral scholars who are passionate about using research for public impact and motivated to engage with partners outside of the university. Fellows join a cohort of other postdocs working in parallel to tackle challenging social problems.
Contact: Alex Carr
Stanford Medicine
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Klingenstein Fellowship
One year, full time
The Klingenstein Fellowship is a mentoring program designed to expose first and second year medical students to child and adolescent psychiatry, and to increase awareness and education about child and adolescent mental health issues.
Contact: Shashank V. Joshi
Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign
Stanford Public Humanities
Public Knowledge Fellowship
Sixth or seventh-year doctoral candidates in the School of Humanities and Sciences have the opportunity to develop a public-facing work of their own vision and to identify a specific community to receive or engage with this work.
Contact: Laura Goode
Stanford SEED
TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy
Vice Provost for Graduate Education
Woods Institute for the Environment
Rising Environmental Leaders Program (RELP)
This program is designed to provide graduate and postdoctoral students with the opportunity to better understand the connection between environmental science and policy-making to help maximize the impact of their research or focal area.
Contact: Sarina Patel