Awards & Scholarships

The Donna Harrington Fellowship Award recognizes the outstanding leadership and mentorship of Donna Harrington. This award supports the development of additional excellence among UMSSW PhD students.

This fellowship was designed to honor Dr. Harrington’s commitment to social work scholarship. This award will benefit future generations of UMSSW PhD students while keeping alive Donna Harrington’s name and extraordinary accomplishments. 

Application Due: April 1
Amount: Up to $2,000
Who is Eligible: Current UMSSW PhD students (Precandidacy)

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News. 

The Jeongseok Kong & Sunmi Jin Memorial PhD Endowment award was created to enhance the research skills and opportunities for PhD students. These grants help cover travel to educational conferences, books and software, or other education-related expenditures. Preference will be given to students who are on F-1 student visas.

Application Due: April 1
Amount: Up to $2,000
Who is Eligible: PhD student at the UMSSW. Preference to F-1 Good academic standing according to UMB Graduate School policy

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News

About Joeng Kong and Sunmi Jin

Jeong Kong entered the UMSSW PhD program in the fall of 2012. He had completed his second year of courses and was taking comprehensive exams in the summer of 2014. That summer, while traveling in New York to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, Jeong and his wife Sunmi died in a tragic car accident. In their lives they modeled many strengths, including courage, commitment, balance, and love. Jeong and Sunmi demonstrated courage in moving to the U.S. to live and study in a new country. Doctoral-level study is challenging for anyone, but international students such as Jeong face the additional hurdle of performing at a high level in a new language while learning how to navigate a different culture. Finally, Jeong demonstrated great commitment to his research in cyberbullying among U.S. and Korean youth. 

This memorial endowment was designed to showcase Jeong and Sunmi's commitment to social work scholarship. The award will benefit future generations of UMSSW PhD students, while keeping alive Jeong’s and Sunmi’s names and the ideals by which they lived.

Established by Dr. Kelly Hyde, PhD class of 2002, the Susan J. Zuravin PhD Scholarship is awarded each spring to a promising PhD student. Dr. Zuravin.Susan Zuravin is a retired Professor from the School of Social Work. She mentored numerous PhD graduates including Diane DePanfilis, Professor at Hunter College; J. Curtis McMillen, Professor at the University of Chicago; Joy Ernst, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Wayne State University; and Denise Pintello, Chief of the Child and Adolescent Research Program, National Institute of Mental Health; to name a few.  

Professor Zuravin taught the two-semester research methods course in the PhD program and was well known for her clear, focused teaching and for guiding students to select the best matched and highest quality research design to answer their research questions. Having worked in the field of child welfare for over twenty years, she brought real world experience to the classroom, and led research teams (many including PhD students) to answer questions about teen parenting, as well as the ecology and the recurrence of child maltreatment. Nationally, she was recognized for her contributions to child maltreatment related research with the Research Career Achievement Award of 1998 by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. Her use of survival analysis, now a commonly used analysis method in social work, was one of the first in all of social work

Application Due: April 1
Amount: $3,000 ($1,500 per semester Fall and Spring)
Who is Eligible: Any PhD student with interest in child welfare research and evaluation

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News. 

The Nikki R. Wooten Dissertation Award for Research with Military, Veterans, and Vulnerable Populations The Nikki R. Wooten Dissertation Award for Research with Military, Veterans, and Vulnerable Populations (hereafter Wooten Dissertation Award) will provide a $1,000 dissertation research award to doctoral candidates who are conducting dissertation research with military, veterans, or vulnerable populations and their families. Research with military and veteran populations will be given preference. Proposed research can utilize any research methodology (quantitative, qualitative, mixed, program evaluation) using primary or secondary data.

 Application Due: June 1
Amount: Up to $1,000
Who is Eligible: PhD Candidate with research focus on military or vulnerable populations research focus

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News. 

We are able to offer a limited number of internal grant awards from the University of Maryland Social Work PhD Program.

Application Due: June June 1 or October 1 
Amount: Up to $4,000 
Who is Eligible: PhD Candidate  

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News. 

• • The Donna Harrington Exemplary Faculty Mentor Award is designed to honor Donna’s legacy as an outstanding mentor to PhD students and to recognize a faculty member each year who follows in her footsteps by providing exceptional support and guidance to a PhD student.  

    Donna Harrington was a faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Social Work from 1995-2018. From 2007 until her too early passing in 2018, she served as the PhD Program Director and held the title of Associate Dean for Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Education.  

    Harrington was an incredible methodologist, researcher, and mentor, who displayed compassion, and curiosity, and was intentionally collaborative in her work. Her advice and expertise were often sought by the newest of students to the most accomplished social scientists.   

    • Nominations from PhD alumni and current Phd students will be solicited each spring. Nominees must be current SSW faculty and (Associate or Regular) members of the UMB Graduate Faculty. The selected faculty recipient will be announced at SSW Convocation each spring. 
   

Nomination Form