Discover Rackham
Student Spotlight: Meghan Forbes
A Ph.D. candidate in the Slavic Department, Meghan’s research focuses primarily on Czech and German literature and visual culture. Her dissertation centers on the relationship between the interwar Czech Avant-Garde of the 1920s and 30s, and other contemporary...
‘Tis the Season – Musings on Grant-Writing
‘Tis the season: writing 300-word summaries of our research and pestering our professors for references, all in the hopes of getting a grant for the next academic year. I know that for more senior students – and professors with stacks of reference requests! – it can...
Student Spotlight: Cass Adair
“This was a teaching experience beyond anything I could have imagined. This was a dream come true, the icing on the cake for my U-M experience, and added great depth to my education. I really loved this class.” A 3rd year Ph.D. candidate, Cass created and taught...
Lunchtime Nuggets
Every once in a while, my department invites students to have a lunch session with an invited speaker, who is either a member of the faculty at an external institution or a faculty candidate (this is also, as far as I know, true of other departments in the biomedical...
Rackham Predoctoral Fellowships: Impacting Graduate Education for 80 Years
In the spring of 1935, in the depths of the Depression, U-M President Alexander Ruthven met with Mary Rackham to present his vision for endowing the Graduate School. Horace Rackham had passed away two years earlier and left his fortune to the newly-established Horace...
Student Spotlight: Alison Gould
Alison studies a bioluminescent symbiosis between the coral reef cardinalfish and a luminous bacterium that the fish houses in a specialized light organ. “Understanding how specificity arises and is maintained in such symbioses is especially important now, as changes...
Student Spotlight: Courtney Lynn McCluney
Courtney’s road to U-M was supported by a strong network of research faculty. As an undergraduate, Courtney participated in the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, which is designed to prepare undergraduate students (especially underrepresented students) for doctoral...
Debbie Freund, From Rackham to University President
When asked why she came to U-M, Debbie says, “As an undergraduate, I was working in a hospital and in what later became an HMO. I wanted to pursue the field somehow, and my faculty told me the best Health Administration programs were at Michigan, so that’s where I...
Alumni Spotlight: Ernie & Martha Hammel
Martha and Ernie first became acquainted with Rackham in 1965. Martha was a Latin major and a teaching fellow, and Ernie was an M.P.H. student. With the skills she strengthened in the graduate program, Martha pursued a teaching career in business and technical writing...
Student Spotlight: Parinaz Naghizadeh Ardabili
A fourth year graduate student, Parinaz hasn’t been home to Iran since she arrived at U-M. “I have a single-entry visa. If I go back, I have to re-apply for a new visa, and I know people who do that, but it is a time-consuming process,” she explains. She has a home...