IRIS Area and International Studies Awards for Incoming Graduate Students

Purpose:

The purpose of these grants is to recruit strong incoming graduate students who will at some point in their graduate training require a period of international fieldwork or development of language or cultural competence off the UW-Madison campus.

Elibigility:

Grants are offered to prospective graduate students as an inducement to study at Wisconsin. Any UW-Madison program that admits graduate students may nominate 1 prospective student. The grants are intended to help programs that admit internationally-oriented or area-studies-oriented graduate students recruit their top candidates.

Grant Details:

Funds will be released approximately 4-6 weeks after you complete this request form. If you do not receive your award within the expected time period, please email awards@iris.wisc.edu.

Note: Awards are considered taxable income.

Awardees who have Non-Resident Alien Status:

• You will receive your award through the payroll system.
• Please ensure that you have Direct Deposit set up and up to date. Otherwise, your payment will be mailed to the default physical address listed in your MyUW Personal Information. Instructions for setting up Direct Deposit can be found here: https://hr.wisc.edu/docs/direct-deposit-setup-translated.pdf
• The funds will be deposited in your account on a payroll pay date (see calendar: https://uwservice.wisconsin.edu/calendars-schedules/). Please note that it may take 2-6 weeks for your payment to be completed.
• Taxes will be deducted from your award prior to payout. Most international students can expect to see a 14% withholding rate, but withholding may be higher if you have not completed all forms and requirements as indicated by the Glacier office: https://hr.wisc.edu/pay/international-payroll-and-taxes/. Please confirm that your Glacier account is up to date, so you are not charged at a higher tax rate.
• If you have any questions or encounter any issues, please email awards@iris.wisc.edu.

All Other Awardees:

• You will receive your award through the Bursar’s scholarship system. If you have an outstanding balance such as unpaid tuition, library fines, or unpaid segregated fees, the award will first be applied towards the balance on your account. Any remaining funds will be disbursed to you in accordance with your Student Center payment preferences.
• You must set up eRefund before your payment is processed. If you do not set up eRefund, the funds will automatically be paid out as a check sent to your default mailing address on file. Even if you have set up direct deposit in the past, we highly recommend that you double check that your information is up to date. eRefund instructions: https://bursar.wisc.edu/refunds/erefund-direct-deposit
• It is your responsibility as an awardee to acquaint yourself with all relevant tax laws that may apply to this award. The University does not provide tax advice. However, the Bursar’s Office does provide some information and guidance with its “Tax Benefits for Education” at https://bursar.wisc.edu/tax. If the information on that page and in this letter is not sufficient, please contact a private tax consultant or the IRS.

Timing:

Nominations for 2025-2026 grants are now open! The nomination deadline is 11:59 pm on Friday, February 14. The review committee will aim to notify nominating units by early March of its decisions so that programs can inform selected incoming students.

Nomination Procedure:

Programs wishing to make a nomination should submit their nominations through the online nomination form. Students may not apply directly; nominations will only be accepted from admitting programs.

Evaluation:

Nominations will be reviewed by an interdisciplenary faculty-led IRIS Review Committee.

A Few Frequently Asked Questions…

Our department has master’s degree students who are applying to continue to a PhD. We also have applicants to the PhD program from other master’s programs on campus. Are they eligible?

The spirit of these awards is to help departments recruit top admissions candidates in area and international studies, persons who probably are being recruited by other universities and whom we’d rather not lose to the competition. Students currently enrolled at Wisconsin are not automatically ineligible. After all, it’s sometimes the case that one of our own undergraduates will rank toward the top of an admissions list but also would look good and has applied to, say, Berkeley or NYU. Likewise, some MA/MS students apply elsewhere to do their PhD work but are attractive candidates here as well.

We do not want to see these fellowships used as bonuses for students already enrolled at Wisconsin and highly unlikely to leave, no matter how good or promising such students might be, and no matter how much they could use a research fellowship.

Only the department knows whether a given student, finishing, say, an MA program here, is on the market for different PhD programs. Only the department has a sense of the probability of that person leaving. Departments should put up persons who meet the spirit of these fellowships and the spirit is definitely recruitment: attracting top admissions candidates to Wisconsin.

If departments do this, the great majority of their nominees are going to be applicants from outside. If now and then there’s a student already here who’s great, whom Wisconsin could lose, and for whom a $5,000 research scholarship stands a good chance of making the difference, then the department, still abiding by the spirit of the awards, certainly should feel free to make that nomination.

About that 1200-character limit on the form for the supporting case… it’d be helpful to have some guidance about what we should include in that short paragraph. Do we need to spend that space connecting the candidate to a prospective advisor? Should we simply state the nature of the international work that is anticipated? It just seems like an awfully short bit of text.

Sing the applicant’s praises. Definitely note where in the world the applicant is likely to work, and thus where (or on what sort of language learning program or the like) the applicant may wish to use the $5,000. It’s understood that this may be speculative, but if the applicant is a Korea specialist, or at least an East Asia specialist, who will certainly need to undertake fieldwork or in-situ learning of some kind in East Asia, say so. It can’t hurt to mention who on the faculty is likely to emerge as the advisor, or which two or three are likeliest. You can also highlight the particular achievements of the candidate and what would make them attractive to “rival” programs at other schools. You can also note whether the department plans to offer the applicant X years of TA support, has put the person up for a University Fellowship, or whatever the case may be. Our selection committee will be eager to invest in admissions candidates in whom the department is highly invested.

Do you have additional questions?

Email them to awards@iris.wisc.edu.

Reports from recipients

All awardees are required to submit a brief report on the activities funded by their award. Reports are listed below by year award was made, name of recipient, and departmental affiliation.