1. Partnerships for Access, Community, and Excellence

Partnerships for Access, Community, and Excellence

The PACE team’s work is guided by the goals of creating access to higher education and sustaining supportive communities at U-M to help students fulfill their potential and goals of excellence.

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Our Initiatives

We build and strengthen partnerships with U-M graduate programs, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and Rackham Merit Fellowship (RMF) eligible students from the undergraduate stage through doctoral completion.

  • Bridges to the Doctorate

    The Building Bridges to the Doctorate program attracts a diverse student body into doctoral education—especially students from historically underrepresented groups—and fully funds students’ master’s educations.

  • Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) Connect

    MSI Connect is part of the Rackham Graduate School’s Minority Serving Institutions Initiative and is designed to support graduate students at U-M that come from minority serving institutions (MSIs). Our team is composed of graduate student ambassadors, coordinators, and Rackham staff who work together to build a community of support for MSI alumni.

  • PACE Fellowship for Graduate Student-Faculty Pairs

    The PACE Fellowship recognizes accomplished doctoral students and faculty mentors who have demonstrated commitment to program climate and student success. Students and faculty are nominated together by their department representatives. Graduate students are selected based on their scholarly accomplishments and efforts to increase student climate, success, and community building within their field. Faculty mentors are selected based on their efforts to increase student success and climate within their department.

  • Rackham Merit Fellowship

    The Rackham Merit Fellowship (RMF) Program helps sustain the academic excellence and inclusiveness of the Michigan graduate community, one that embraces students with diverse experiences and goals, and who come from many educational, cultural, geographic, and familial backgrounds. By offering this named prestigious fellowship to students, we aim to promote the values of diversity and inclusion by encouraging the admission of students who represent a broad array of life experiences and perspectives, because this enhances the quality of the intellectual environment for all students.

  • Rackham Recruitment Grants

    The Rackham Recruitment Grants program supports the innovative efforts of faculty, staff, and students in recruiting highly qualified graduate students with a wide breadth of experiences and interests.

Our Team

Contact Us

Hours: Partnerships for Access, Community, and Excellence is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The office is closed Saturdays and Sundays and on university holidays.

  • Location
    1530 Rackham Building
    915 East Washington Street
    Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1070

  • Contact
    Email: [email protected]
    Phone: 734.936.0360