Professorships and Fellowships

Stanford's excellence is built on our outstanding faculty and students. To ensure our future excellence, we must continue to attract, retain, and cultivate the best of both. Endowed professorships and graduate fellowships are among the most important resources we have to bring these top scholars to Stanford and to support them once they are here.

Professorships are the highest honor the university can bestow upon current faculty who have made extraordinary contributions to research and teaching. They also enable us to offer competitive compensation packages in recruiting scholars who are in high demand around the country and the world. The roster of faculty who hold endowed professorships stands as an honor roll of the most distinguished faculty members in any generation.

Our graduate students fully embody the university's mission of excellence in teaching, learning, and research. The primary criteria for graduate admission in any school or department are superior academic achievement and a potential to contribute to Stanford's academic and professional communities as well as to society as a whole. Competition for admission to Stanford at the graduate level is intense, and only the top candidates are admitted. These students are offered financial support that usually comprises a combination of fellowships, loans, and teaching or research assistantships. As such, fellowships are key to our ability to attract and support the most talented graduate students.

Core Support Across the University

Another means by which Stanford can ensure its future excellence is by continuing to provide our exceptional faculty and students the top-notch facilities, as well as research and programmatic funding, that allow them to carry out their educational and research activities. Stanford cannot be successful with ambitious new cross-disciplinary programs unless its core disciplinary-based programs remain world-class. Similarly, the search for fundamental knowledge must remain vibrant and central. Basic research often provides the key to invention, discovery, and innovation; as such, it forms the building blocks for breakthrough solutions that have the potential to transform lives. Moreover, universities are among the only places where basic research and teaching in fundamental disciplines can be undertaken. This work is intrinsically vital, and we must continue to foster and support this important aspect of our mission.