SPICE: Student Projects for Intellectual Community Enhancement

For most graduate students, the majority of their educational experiences take place in the department or program that grants their degree. When students are intellectually engaged with many other members of their department they are more likely to learn and grow as scholars. All members benefit when a vibrant intellectual community is an obvious part the department’s culture.

Interdisciplinary inquiry and cross-departmental multidisciplinary conversations are a hallmark of graduate studies at Stanford. When intellectual communities include perspectives from many fields and paradigms of inquiry, knowledge can advance in unexpected ways. Consequently, multidisciplinary intellectual communities are also of benefit.

Students do not need to wait for intellectual communities to be developed for them. They can be energetic agents who create activities that enhance the academic life of the department.

SPICE Funds support graduate students (master’s, doctoral, or professional) to develop innovative activities to expand the intellectual community of their department or program.

SPICE proposals:

• must be led by graduate students
• put ideas and debate at their center
• involve students across subfields and at different stages in their studies
• a comprehensive set of activities is preferred.

A call for SPICE proposals usually goes out to the campus in Spring Quarter. The first group of SPICE awards were made in the spring of 2008. Both department-based and interdisciplinary SPICE proposals were solicited for spring 2009.

Awarded SPICE projects

• 2008
• 2009

Application Information (Spring Quarter 2009)

The next SPICE proposal deadline will be March 10, 2010. More information will be provided at the beginning of the Winter quarter. The information below was released in Spring 2009, and generally describes the application process.

• SPICE 2009 Overview (pdf file)
• SPICE Application Instructions (pdf)
• SPICE Application Form (downloadable Word form)

SPICE in the news

• Reinventing graduate education: New Stanford grant program aims to foster creativity, community in Ph.D. programs (Palo Alto Online)
• Grad Student Grants Promote Community (Stanford Daily)