
Scholarships
There are multiple scholarship opportunities available to Geography undergraduate and graduate students. The SDSU Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships has an application form that you can complete to auto-apply to many University, College, and Department scholarship opportunities. Once you complete this form, you may be referred to additional scholarship opportunities that require additional application material.
Geography scholarships administered through the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships include: the Alvena Storm Award, the Lauren Post Award, the McFarland Award, the Ned Greenwood Award (for Physical Geography), the William and Vivian Finch Award (for Remote Sensing), and the Wright Cartography Award. Additional scholarship opportunities may be made available to students on an ongoing basis via the department, the University, or your advisor. A partial list of scholarship opportunities that students may apply to outside of the University Scholarship office system is below.
If you have any questions regarding scholarship opportunities in Geography, please
contact Candra Young at the Geography Department.
Partial List of Geography Student Scholarship Opportunities
Graduate students only - calls for applications will go out the 3rd week in January each year
- Long Gen Ying Travel Fund (PhD students only, for travel in China - up to $3000)
- Vivian Finch Latin American Fund (to support research in Latin America - up to $2000)
- Montaha Deek Curti Scholarship for Work in Social and Environmental Justice (currently $500)
- Graduate student travel awards
- Graduate Equity Fellowship: For Master’s students demonstrating financial need, must be CA resident
- Inamori Graduate Fellowships
- Student Success Fee Awards: Undergraduate and Graduate
- American Association of Geographers (AAG): Student Travel Awards, Paper Awards, and Presentation Awards (often administered by specialty groups to students presenting at the AAG annual meeting)
- American Association of University Women (AAUW): Scholarships for graduate women
- American Geophysical Union: Student travel grants to the Fall meeting
- American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)
- National Competitions (deadline early Fall)
- Robert N. Colwell Memorial Fellowship for PhD students ($6500)
- William A. Fischer Memorial Scholarship for current or prospective graduate students ($2000)
- Pacific Southwest Regional competitions (deadline around late March)
- Scholarship for students pursuing a degree in Geospatial Sciences ($1000)
- National Competitions (deadline early Fall)
- Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG)
- Student travel awards and paper awards to students presenting at the APCG annual meeting
- Various awards to graduate students in Geography to support field work or scholarship
- Association of Environmental Professionals (AEP), San Diego, Student Chapter
- Compost Research College Scholarships (UG, Master’s, PhD available for students doing research on compost)
- CSU COAST scholarships (for ocean and coastal research)
- Undergraduate research scholarships – available annually via a call for proposals internally at SDSU
- Graduate scholarships (research and travel)
- The Explorers Club Student Grants
- Ford Foundation: For PhD students, seeks to increase diversity
- Fulbright: For research in a foreign country
- Los Angeles Geographic Society (LAGS): Merit-based scholarships for upper level Geography majors in Southern California
- National Geographic Society
- National Science Foundation: Geography and Spatial Sciences Program - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards (GSS-DDRI)
- North Face Explore Fund: Outdoor participation, access, or environmental protection
- Social Science Research Council Fellowships (mostly for PhD students)
- Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF)
- Other topical Fellowships available
- Society of Woman Geographers (SWG) Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research: Female students in PhD programs in Geography
- United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation: Students of all levels studying geospatial sciences