Graduate Fellows Program

Graduate Fellows
Graduate fellows program

The Graduate Fellows Program at the Center for Great Plains Studies provides an interdisciplinary community of support for graduate students engaged in research, writing, and/or creative work related to the Great Plains.

Graduate Fellows are selected annually from individuals nominated by Center Fellows. If you wish to be nominated during the nomination period, please contact a Fellow. Program details and nomination forms

Current Graduate Fellows

Jim Benes

Jim Benes

Department: Geography, School of Global Integrated Studies
Focus: Fire History of the Northern Great Plains
Paul Grosskopf

Paul Grosskopf

Department: English
Focus: Fatness in American Literature

Laura Cobb

Laura Cobb

Department: Art
Focus: Photography with an emphasis in portraiture and landscape

Megan Launchbaugh

Megan Launchbaugh

Department: History (UNK)
Focus: Tree planting and environmental construction on the Great Plains
Bailey McNichol

Bailey McNichol

Department: Biological Sciences
Focus: Diversity and change in Nebraska's forests
Laura Segura Hernandez

Laura Segura Hernández

Department: Biological Sciences
Focus: Arachnids, Climate change focuses on changes at broad spatial and temporal scales

Graduate Fellow stories

Great Plains Graduate Fellow alum essay:

Aubrey Streit Krug (PhD, English and Great Plains Studies, Great Plains Graduate Fellow alumna) recently had an essay published via the Center for Humans and Nature, which issued a call for responses to a recent question series: "What kind of ancestor do you want to be?" In her essay, she writes about being grounded through native Bluestem roots and the lessons she learned while studying the Omaha language at the University of Nebraska—namely how keeping the past in front of us can help make a better future. Streit Krug is a postdoctoral fellow at the Land Institute in Kansas.

Great Plains Graduate Fellows team up for paper

A cross-disciplinary partnership between English PhD Aubrey Streit Krug and Natural Resources PhD Daniel Uden resulted in this new paper, published in Ecology and Society.

Citation: Streit Krug, A., Uden, D., Allen, C., & Twidwell, D. (2017). Culturally induced range infilling of Eastern Redcedar: A problem in ecology, an ecological problem, or both?. Ecology and Society, 22(2).

Previous graduate fellows:
Belinda Acosta (English)
Kami Ahrens (English)
Sara Anderson (Anthropology)
Hannah Birge (Natural Resources)
Eileen Boswell (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education)
Sabrina Brown (Earth and Atmospheric Science)
Jessica Burnett (Natural Resource Sciences)
Jie Cheng (Electrical Engineering)
Daniel Clausen (English)
Donna Devlin (History)
Tori Donovan (Agronomy and Horticulture)
Jamie Downing (Communication Studies)
Mikal Eckstrom (History)
William England (Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education)
Joshua Ewalt (Communication Studies)
John K. Fitzpatrick III (Anthropology)
Kent Fricke (Natural Resource Sciences)
Jacob Friefeld (History)
Aileen Garcia (Child, Youth and Family Studies)
Susana Geliga (History)
Nora Greiman (Anthropology/Archaeology)
Matthew Guzman (English)
Shivani Jadeja (Biology)
Joe Hamm (Psychology)
Clayton Hanson (History)
Alicia Harris (Art History)
Jason Hertz (English)
Katharine Hogan (Natural Resources/Applied Ecology)
MacKayla Kelsey (English)
Aubrey Streit Krug (English)



Chih-Chung Lee (Biological Sciences)
Louise Lynch (Entomology)
Cara Morgenson (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education)
Maria Nazos (English)
Jason Nolan (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences)
Emily Rau (English)
Caleb Roberts (Agronomy and Horticulture)
Nathan Rossman (Earth and Atmospheric Science)
Rebekka Schlichting (Journalism)
Robert Shepard (Geography)
Maggi Sliwinski
Kristin Sorensen (Geography)
Jennifer Stacy (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education)
Cameron Steele (English)
Kristine Subeck (TLTE)
Kaitlin Sundberg (History, UNO)
Alexis Swendener (Sociology)
Baligh Ben Taleb (History)
Sarah Taylor (Children, Youth and Family Studies)
Matthew Thompson (Civil Engineering)
Daniel Uden (Natural Resources)
Reed Underwood (TLTE)
Blake Weeder (History, UNK)
Matt Whitaker (English)
Cory Willard (English)
Rebecca Wingo (History)

Graduate Fellows Program

The Graduate Fellows Program of the Center for Great Plains Studies offers support for selected graduate students engaged in research, writing, and/or creative work related to the Great Plains.

The Center provides Graduate Fellows with $600 each year in research and travel funds and hosts events such as writing workshops and retreats for Fellows. Fellows work together on Voices of the Plains, a new program that amplifies the voices of distinctive communities on the Great Plains whose perspectives have historically been marginalized, underrepresented, or misunderstood.

Students who are enrolled in a doctoral program or a terminal-degree master's program in a Great Plains-related discipline are eligible to apply. A Fellow of the Center must nominate a Graduate Fellow.

The Center for Great Plains Studies hosts six to eight Graduate Fellows each year. The appointment is for a term of two years (one year for master’s students), with possible reappointment for an additional year.

2022 Applications

Next application period is May 2023

STUDENT APPLICATION  |  NOMINATE A STUDENT

Selection Guidelines: The Center will invite applications from graduate students from all four NU campuses to apply to be a Great Plains Graduate Fellow. Each application will require nomination by a Center Fellow. Graduate Fellows will be selected based on academic performance, relevance of the student’s graduate work to the Great Plains, and proposed participation in the Voices of the Plains project.