I have just learned that I have been awarded the major grant that I applied for: the Graduate Research Mentorship. The program provides a large stipend (even more than a TAship) and tuition remission. In the age of California’s budgetary apocalypse, student protests over UC tuition hikes, and my department’s inability to pay for copies of classroom handouts, I am dumbstruck by my good fortune. The UCLA Graduate Division describes the program:

The Graduate Research Mentorship (GRM) Program is designed to assist students in acquiring and developing advanced research skills under faculty mentorship. The Program is open to doctoral students in the humanities, social sciences and other disciplines where students have little opportunity for academic apprentice appointments or other University funding relevant to their graduate training. An expected outcome is to increase the number of students who complete the PhD degree and who show promise as candidates for faculty appointments. Faculty mentors are expected to be in the same locale as the student participants and assist them with research leading to the development of a doctoral dissertation.

My project will deal with the social functions of apocalyptic thought in early Christian communities. My mentor will be Ra’anan Boustan. I explained in my proposal, “The topic of apocalyptic thought is a particularly nebulous research area, for which ten-week seminars do not provide ample time for processing. Working closely with Prof. Boustan on the relevant concepts and scholarship for an entire year would offer an invaluable opportunity in terms of my progress in the program and my ability to develop original insights in my field.” For me, this program will come on the heels of my participation in the summer version of this grant (the “Graduate Summer Research Mentorship”) with my advisor, Scott Bartchy, on a related topic this summer.

The downside of taking this grant is that it means I will not teach next year. I love teaching. It is the most fulfilling thing that I do. But being a teacher and a researcher at the same time is like leading a double life (and that’s not even factoring my family life!). The two (teaching and researching) are both academic enterprises, but they often feel so disconnected — especially when I’m teaching Western Civ. (“Circa A.D. 843 to Circa 1715″) and doing research on the Deuteronomistic History, as I’m doing at the moment. How do I find time to immerse myself fully into two completely divergent topics in the span of a ten week quarter? I can’t. So, I come up with a compromise — such is the academic life.

Next year, this fellowship means that I won’t have to compromise on the time I devote to my research, and also that I can complete my Ph.D. earlier and, thus, find a teaching post somewhere sooner. One former UCLA Ph.D. student told me recently that receiving the GRM grant made him feel like he had a two year head start on his dissertation. That’s what I’m hoping for. Also, though, I have a couple language exams yet to take and then my comprehensive exams will be coming by the end of next year. I hope to have all of my exams completed before the 2011-2012 academic year (my fourth year at UCLA) begins. The GRM gives me the space to run with that task.

As my fellow Bruin, Kevin Scull, explains (see this post too), funding for our program is a bit of a buried treasure that you need to seek out. Nobody in my program is offered a guaranteed “funding package.” Hopefully, we can be an encouragement to other Ph.D. students out there to seek out that funding!