Diverse Knowledge Systems for Climate Adaptation Fellowship
Who is Eligible?
This opportunity is open to graduate students at CASC Consortium Institutions and Minority-Serving Institutions. Applicants must be registered students for the entire fellowship year. See below for details.
Have Questions?
If you have any questions regarding the SOI process, please contact Abigail Lynch (ajlynch@usgs.gov). If you have any issues specifically with the online submission system, please visit our Help site or contact (casc@usgs.gov).
The Diverse Knowledge Systems in Climate Adaptation Fellowship supports graduate students for one year as they use their diverse experiences, viewpoints, value systems, and cultural knowledge to strengthen their climate adaptation efforts.
How to Apply
Learn about the application requirements and how to navigate the application portal here.
Requirements
Learn about the expectations surrounding fellowship eligibility, funding, travel, and final reporting.
Current Opportunities
The application period for the 2024 Fellowship cohort is closed. Applications for the 2025 cohort will open in early December 2024.
About the Fellowship
There are many ways of exploring and understanding the natural world. Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples have cultural identities developed through millennia of connection with their homelands. Farmers and ranchers have deep understandings of the plants, animals, soils, and weather patterns at the foundation of their livelihoods. Intercity communities live and work among urban ecosystems and have unique experiences with the intersections between nature and society, power and class.
Yet, traditional Western science often does not value these knowledge systems or provide ways of integrating knowledge held outside the peer-reviewed literature. In creating these silos, the scientific community is unable to fully understand the diverse peoples and ecosystems that make up our nation.
The Diverse Knowledge Systems for Climate Adaptation (DKS) Fellowship provides graduate students an opportunity to explore the unique perspectives they bring to science. Over the course of the one-year fellowship, students will collaborate with USGS researchers to develop a project applying their unique knowledge system to applied climate adaptation research. Mentors from the USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) will work with fellows to identify how their science can help on-the-ground practitioners understand, plan for, and adapt to climate change impacts. They will also teach them how to work with stakeholders and rightsholders to ensure their work is useful for those who need it, exemplifying the partnership-based model of the CASC network.
2023 Fellows
Connecting Community: Assessing Patterns in Climate Change, Fish Abundance, and Shark Parturition Phenology in a Hawaiian Fishery through Local Ecological Knowledge
Mentored by Mari-Vaughn Johnson (Pacific Islands CASC)
Exploring the Intersection of Settler Colonialism and Climate Change on the Fort Hall Bottoms
Mentored by Aparna Bamzai-Dodson and Brian Miller (North Central CASC)
Who is Eligible?
The CASC culture is to advance diversity, inclusion, and empowerment for traditionally underrepresented communities.
This opportunity is open to graduate students at:
- CASC Consortium Institutions (see map)
- Minority-serving institutions such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions.
Applicants must be registered students for the entire fellowship year (justified exceptions will be considered in special cases).
As a Fellow, you will:
- Develop and implement a 1-year project that uses your unique knowledge system to help natural resource managers and/or communities understand, plan for, and/or adapt to climate change impacts.
- Have a $10,000 award to spend on DKS project expenses, such as travel to and from project locations
- Be mentored by CASC experts focused on engagement-centered research designed to meet on-the-ground needs
- Travel to work with CASC mentors for 2 months (typically during the summer) and meet with USGS staff, university faculty, and project partners
During the fellowship year and beyond, fellows benefit from collaborations with university and USGS mentors, from interactions with other colleagues and partners of USGS, and from exposure to high priority, real-world challenges in the natural resources policy arena.
Learn more about program requirements >>
How To Apply
Statement of Interest
First, applicants will submit a Statements of Interest to express interest in the fellowship and to help the review panel pair applicants with potential CASC mentors. Applicants do not need to identify a CASC mentor at this stage.
The Statement of Interest includes:
- One-page cover letter
- One-page pre-proposal
- CV
Full Proposal
Should an applicant be selected to advance to the full proposal stage, the CASCs will match the applicant to a potential mentor based on the proposed project and appropriate CASC expertise. The applicant is then invited to work with their mentor to submit a Full Proposal.
The Full Proposal includes:
- Revised one-page cover letter
- Revised CV
- Full project proposal
- Letters of recommendation from each of the applicant's mentors.
Timeline (subject to annual appropriations)
| Application Stage | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Statement of Interest (SOI) Due | Thursday, January 18, 2024, 11:59pm ET |
| Decision on SOI and Notification to Applicant | Friday, February 23, 2024 |
| Formal Application Due (If SOI is selected) | Thursday, March 28, 2024, 11:59pm ET |
| Decision on Formal Application and Notification to Applicant | Friday, April 26, 2024 |
Learn more about how to submit application materials and evaluation criteria >>
About the CASCs
The USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) is a partnership-driven program that delivers science to help fish, wildlife, water, land, and people adapt to a changing climate. We follow an actionable science model, working directly with natural resource managers and other partners to create research and tools that can be applied directly to adaptation decisions. There is one National and nine reginal CASCs that serve the continental United States, Alaska, Hawai'i, the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands, and the U.S. Caribbean. Regional CASCS are federal-university partnerships made up of consortiums of academic, Tribal and non-profit institutions.