PhD student Erika Vallejo receives American Political Science Association's Minority Fellowship

May 27, 2020

Political Science doctoral student Erika Vallejo has been awarded the APSA Minority Fellowship for fall 2020-spring 2021. 

Vallejo is an RGV native from Texas. She obtained her B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Before joining the Political Science department at MSU, she worked at an educational center, where she greatly enjoyed working with students and furthered her passion for academia. Her research interests include American politics, specifically gender, race, immigration, and labor relations.

The Minority Fellows Program (MFP) is a fellowship competition for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds applying to or in the early stages of doctoral programs in political science. The MFP was established in 1969 (originally as the Black Graduate Student Fellowship) to increase the number of African American graduate students in the discipline. In 1979 the Chicano Student Fellowship was established. Overtime, the fellowship program has expanded to include support for racial and ethnic underrepresented scholars. Since its inception, the APSA MFP has designated more than 600 fellows and contributed to the successful completion of doctoral political science programs for over 100 individuals. 


Each year, APSA awards between 12-14 funded fellowships in the amount of $4,000. Recently, APSA introduced a new spring round of the MFP awards for graduate students in the pre-dissertation stage of their career. This year, the spring cycle MFP awards are available in the form of a one-time award ranging between $1000 - $2000 (depending upon funding availability), to support expenses related to PhD graduate study for first and second year political science PhD students from underrepresented groups.