An anonymous donor has gifted $250,000 to support University of Maine graduate students.
The funds, which were donated to the University of Maine Foundation, will be used to provide both merit and need-based assistance to graduate students who are currently enrolled at UMaine in a master’s or doctoral program.
An estimated 20 students will receive awards of up to $10,000 each to continue seeking their degree.
That comes as President Donald Trump’s administration is withholding $50 million in funding from Maine’s public universities following the state’s decision to not comply with Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
The cuts led UMaine to pause all new teaching, research and fellowship offers in March due to funding uncertainties, an action that affected 806 of the 3,261 graduate students. The university later announced that more financial aid awards would be made available for current grad students on a rolling basis. UMaine said these awards would have priority for those that “align with institutional operational needs” along with honoring existing awards.
This donation will attempt to counteract some of the cuts by giving priority to doctoral students nearing degree completion who lost assistantship funding due to the termination, suspension or delay of federal grants according to Kody Varahramyan, UMaine’s vice president for research and dean of its graduate school.
“This additional, private funding comes at a critical time for many of our graduate students,” Varahramyan said Thursday. “Without it, their progress toward degree completion — and the important research they conduct related to state, national and global needs and interests — is at risk.”
The university system currently has nearly 7,000 enrollees, an all-time high for graduate enrollment.
