The Explorers Club Washington Group is awarding a total of $15,652 in exploration grants to five graduate students.

The ECWG’s Grants Committee selected the awardees from 36 graduate students from nine universities in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

• 2014 Grant Awardees and their Studies

“This group of proposals was highly competitive,” said Polly Penhale, FN ’91, the chair of the Grants Committee.” Of note is that the cost of conducting field work has risen considerably since the program was initiated in 1997.

“Since the program’s beginning, we have made 104 awards, totaling $181,598. We have made a big difference in the careers of many students,” she said. “Our awardees have conducted successful research and exploration projects. Several students credited our support as helping them obtain subsequent support from other major grant programs.”

While many of the early awards were in the $1000-2000 range, today’s cost of airplane tickets, gasoline, sample analysis, etc. means that the budget requests have been rising. Most of the applicants have some level of graduate stipend support (which our program does not fund), and bits and pieces of support gathered from various sources. Our funds tend to support preliminary research, trips to museum collections, and field work (travel expenses, small instruments, etc.).

The awards and amounts from the past 3 years were:

• 2011   $17,840   8 students
• 2012   $16,758   6 students
• 2013   $18,500   8 students