Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Funding Priorities

Endowed Professorship in Environmental Ethics The Department of Fisheries and Wildlife has faculty representing a variety of sub-disciplines in the biological and social sciences, yet none of our faculty have expertise in philosophy and the application of philosophical disciplines to the ethics of environmental stewardship. It is critical that we address this growing need and align ourselves with our diverse citizenry to instill this guardianship for Michigan's natural heritage. The Department of Fisheries and Wildlife seeks to establish an endowed professorship that will foster dialogue and scholarship on developing stewards of our natural resources. We seek to create a joint appointment between the colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Natural Science, Arts and Letters and their partners.

Youth stewardship endowment The Department of Fisheries and Wildlife carries out much of its outreach program with young people through programs with 4-H and other youth organizations. We seek to continue to build these programs with endowments that support programs and program educators. An overall goal of $2.5 million is needed with support coming in a variety of endowments, ranging from $50,000 and higher.

Endowed graduate fellowships Many graduate students in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife are supported on research assistantships for specific funded research projects. However, to recruit nationally competitive graduate students, we find a need to have dedicated recruitment fellowships, and seek to target these in two categories: endowed graduate teaching fellowships and endowed graduate research fellowships. The teaching fellowships are meant to attract doctoral students who are interested in a career in university level teaching in fisheries and wildlife related fields. Fellows will have opportunities to work closely with faculty in course design and delivery - a richer and fuller assignment than a typical teaching assistantship. In addition, teaching fellows will have access to faculty development workshops at MSU and at regional and national meetings to help develop their teaching portfolio. Research fellowships are meant to attract doctoral students with high potential in research, and will provide them with the support they need to develop their own doctoral research project in collaboration with their faculty mentor. The Department of Fisheries and Wildlife is seeking two teaching fellowship endowments and two research fellowship endowments at $500,000 each, for an overall goal of $2,000,000.

Undergraduate internship fellowships Some Fisheries and Wildlife majors take advantage of summer work experiences in the field of fisheries and wildlife to gain valuable experience for their career in this discipline. However, many students do not pursue an internship because the internship does not pay a salary, or the pay is too low for them to be able to pay their tuition and fees in the next academic year. Internship fellowships would allow students to take advantage of the variety of valuable and unique work opportunities without concern for whether the internship provided a stipend by providing a suitable stipend while the student is on internship. The Department of Fisheries and Wildlife is seeking to establish endowments totaling $1,000,000 (from $30,000) to support up to 10 students on internship each year.

Endowed undergraduate minority recruitment fellowships As the field of Fisheries and Wildlife continues to grow, a greater diversity of students entering the field is needed. Often students of minority background are not familiar with the career opportunities in this discipline, and lack role models to help show them the attractiveness of the field. Recruitment fellowships are meant to help attract students to a discipline that they may know little about, and to provide financial support during summer months so that these students can benefit from experiential learning opportunities (with conservation agencies and organizations, or with research programs or with natural resource education programs). Varying levels of endowments are needed, ranging from $50,000 to $500,000.