SPICE: Student Projects for Intellectual Community Enhancement

About

by Application
Eligibility: All Graduate Students, Postdoctoral Scholars
Period: Spring quarter
Duration: Annual application cycle
Amount Awarded: Up to $3,000

SPICE Details

SPICE Overview and Application Guidelines

Are you a graduate student or postdoctoral scholar interested in funding opportunities to enhance the intellectual community within your degree program or across multiple degree programs?

Most graduate students' educational experiences take place primarily in the degree program. When students are intellectually engaged with many other members of their degree program, they are more likely to learn and grow. All members benefit when a vibrant intellectual community is an explicit part of the degree program’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 inquiry paradigms, knowledge advances unexpectedly. 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 their degree program or many degree programs.

SPICE funds support graduate (master’s, doctoral, or professional) student and postdoctoral scholar initiatives that develop activities to expand the intellectual community of their degree program or many degree programs. VPGE is also excited to announce that SPICE has been expanded to include projects previously funded through the Diversity Innovation Funding (DIF) program.

SPICE Application

SPICE Overview and Application Guidelines

must be led by graduate students or postdoctoral scholars
put ideas and debate at their center
involve graduate students across subfields and at different stages in their studies
preferably should offer a comprehensive set of activities

The regular SPICE application opens in Spring Quarter. The first group of SPICE awards was made in Spring 2008. Both department-based and interdisciplinary SPICE applications are encouraged.

Annual Application Cycle

Applications for 2026-27 have closed

Award Notifications: Early July 2026

Questions