The fundraising focus during these last few months of the Michigan Difference Campaign is on helping departments and programs recruit and educate the best graduate students in the nation.

A graduate fellowship costs approximately $50K annually and the Comparative Literature department has 40 graduate students. Support is needed to fully fund these positions and to remain competitive. In addition to fellowships in the early years and dissertation fellowships in the later years, our students' unique need for international experience and linguistic fluency makes study abroad a necessity and finding ways to support it among our students a challenge.

President Coleman has created a matching gift program to help with these challenges. Every tow dollars given to graduate students support before December 31, 2008, will be matched with one dollar from the President's Challenge Fund. Details on the program can be found online at:

www.giving.umich.edu/where/presidents challenge

Our grad students' work very hard. They teach hundreds of students, are involved in research projects that explore understudied literatures in Africa, and return to the enduring puzzles posed by literatures of the classical age. They are the glue that keeps the department together and the engine that pushes everyone to think beyond what is known today. Their passion drives them to achieve, despite the financial sacrifices. Please help them reach their goal by supporting their success with a gift to the Department of Comparative Literature Graduate Student Fund. Thank you, in advance for supporting our graduate students and the Department of Comparative Literature.

For those who prefer to mail a check, a donation form can be found here. Please print the form and mail it with your donation to:

Department of Comparative Literature

2015 Tisch Hall

435 S. State St.

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003