The Graduate School at the University of Utah will expand the number of fully funded fellowships. Graduate students pursuing economic policy research in law, banking, business, education, health, finance, humanities, social sciences and exploring the impact of their research on relationships among politics, public policy and the economy are eligible to apply here by Feb. 7, 2020.

How? The U has received approval to restructure a trust established by Marriner S. Eccles himself that will allow approximately six to eight students per year to receive fellowships worth about $30,000 per recipient, one of the U’s most prestigious. The fellowships are reserved for students studying political economy and are open to students across many departments, including the David Eccles School of Business and the College of Social and Behavioral Science.

“Marriner was a visionary and thanks to this trust, the University of Utah has been able to award 377 graduate fellowships since 1977,” said David Kieda, Graduate School dean at the U. “We are honored to continue his legacy and award even more fellowships to our brilliant U students.”

Additionally, the initiative will boost the prominence and national impact of the Marriner S. Eccles Fellowship and Library Collection on campus. Eccles was the first Chairman of the Federal Reserve after it was restructured in 1935—President Franklin D. Roosevelt handpicked Eccles to shepherd the nation through the Great Depression.

“Marriner was truly one of the great minds in political economy and we want to give students across the University the chance to benefit from his legacy,” said Taylor Randall, dean of the Eccles School. “We hope students will bring a diversity of thought that will lead to lively discussion and collaboration and formulate new research that will create meaningful contributions to the field.”

The Graduate School, the Marriner S. Eccles Institute for Economics and Quantitative Analysis housed at the David Eccles School of Business and the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation plan to launch the initiative in early 2020, with five distinct goals:

1. Create a cohort class of Marriner S. Eccles Graduate Fellows who will engage in both individual and group research projects in political economy.
2. Increase the number of Eccles Graduate Fellowships to a minimum of six per year.
3. Digitize and curate the Marriner S. Eccles manuscript collection.
4. Create an online portal for full research access to the Marriner S. Eccles manuscript collection.
5. Incentivize scholarly research and publication in the field of political economy using the completed Marriner S. Eccles Library and manuscript collection.

Students at the university will not be the only ones to benefit from the initiative, as plans also include digitization of Marriner’s personal archives and an online portal to allow access around the world. Currently, only about 10% of the collection has been digitized. Putting the entire collection online will allow economists from around the world a peek directly into one of the greatest economic minds of the 20th century.

“We are so excited that this project will preserve Marriner’s legacy, while simultaneously sharing his collection with the next generation of political economists,” said Hope Eccles of the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation.

Applicants are judged on personal and academic qualifications, strength and appropriateness of their proposals, and interested in participating in the cohort and library resources. Applications for the 2020 Marriner S. Eccles Fellowship in Political Economy are due Feb. 7. More information can be found here.