Prestigious USDA Fellowship grant awarded to UH Mānoa team
University of Hawaiʻi at MānoaContact:
Posted: Feb 23, 2010
Drs. Catherine Chan-Halbrendt in front, with Creighton Litton and Christopher Lepczyk in back.
UH Mānoa’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management (NREM) has been awarded a USDA National Needs Graduate Fellowship (NNF) focused on integrative training in sustainability sciences for the period of 2010-15. The $156,000 grant—awarded to Drs. Catherine Chan-Halbrendt, Carl Evensen, Christopher A. Lepczyk and Creighton M. Litton—will provide highly competitive fellowships for two doctoral students. They will address interdisciplinary questions related to sustainability, and use the Hawai‘i 2050 Sustainability Plan as an overarching framework. The two fellows will join a cohort of students working on the interrelated areas of ecosystem services, sustainable ecosystem management, community watershed management, and environmental valuation and policy.
The overall objectives of the NNF program are to support training of graduate students in targeted expertise shortage areas in the food and agricultural sciences, with the ultimate goal of workforce-readiness and globally competitive graduates. The 2009 NNF Program received 92 applications nationally requesting over $20 million in support for graduate training projects, of which 23 were selected to support a total of 45 doctoral and 23 Master of Science students. In receiving this grant, the four faculty members noted that “it demonstrates strong support for the interdisciplinary perspective provided by the NREM program, which is greatly needed to address the current challenges facing our ecosystems.”