Select Page
Home » Faculty and Staff » Faculty and Program Funding » Rackham Recruitment Grant

Rackham Recruitment Grant

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..

Rackham is deeply committed to supporting programs in their efforts to establish successful recruitment strategies and plans. Recruiting graduate students is a dynamic process and it involves multiple phases, both prior to and after the admissions decision. Rackham developed the Circle of Recruitment: Toolkit of Promising Practices as a resource for programs to identify the multiple phases related to effective recruitment as well as examples of promising practices for each phase.

Purview of the Rackham Recruitment Grant

Rackham Recruitment Grants are specifically designed to support the recruitment related activities. These include:

  • Prospecting: Efforts that help identify individuals who should be in your application pool.
  • Encouraging Application Completion: Efforts to maximize the number of prospective students identified in the prospecting stage to apply to your program.
  • Evaluation: Procedures and criteria used to select students with best “fit” with your program.
  • Post-Admissions Recruiting: Efforts to encourage admitted applicants to accept U-M admissions offer over those of competitors.
  • Pre-Enrolled: Efforts to support all incoming students as they begin to make the physical and psychological transitions into graduate school.

Funding to Support the Remaining Stages

For funding to support the remaining stages of the “Circle of Recruitment,” please see the Rackham Faculty Allies Diversity Grant program.

Other Program Information

Rackham graduate programs may apply for one Rackham Recruitment Grant per year for up to $5,000 (Rackham Graduate School reserves the right to fund proposals in an amount smaller than $5,000). Grants cannot be used to pay faculty or staff salaries or benefits, or U-M tuition of fees.

Rackham will reimburse programs for expenses incurred for authorized activities at the conclusion of the project. Reimbursement will be initiated upon receipt of a final report detailing the activities, along with an associated budget and listing of expenditures. Any questions should be sent to rack-pipeline-gradschool@umich.edu.

Proposal Submission

Proposals are due on Monday, May 5, 2025.

  1. Please download and complete a proposal template. Save the completed proposal as a PDF.
  2. Obtain a letter of support (one page maximum) from the department chair, director, or dean.
  3. Submit information to the Rackham Recruitment Grant Application, including the proposal and letter of support.

Award Notification

No later than Monday, June 23, 2025.