Dear Society Members,

On New Year’s Eve is coming; please consider making a tax deductible contribution to the Society for the History of Navy Medicine.  All monies go to very good causes such as funding our graduate student travel award and graduate student research award.

A small contribution of just $30 might seem insignificant, but in the big picture, it helps to get our graduate students to our conferences. You may not be aware of this, but as universities have become more corporate entities (as is the trend throughout the United States), fellowships and tuition waivers are being reduced or cancelled.   In fact, at my University, tuition waivers don’t exist anymore for graduate students in my college as they did a decade ago.  This means graduate students have to pay their own tuition out of their very small stipends.   This situation may not be true for graduate students at the top-tier universities, but overall the last ten years have seen universities reduce graduate student stipends and tuition waivers just as faculty salaries have stayed stagnant or in many cases have also been reduced.  And it is worse for graduate students because  the cost of living has increased tremendously.  Many graduate student have to resort to student loans to offset small stipends, and many do not have any healthcare at all.  This is the world we now live in today in Higher Education.

So please, think about making this contribution, today.  We are planning a fantastic conference for 2018 focused on World War I, and I would like to get a whole panel of graduate students there if possible.  Conferences are marvelous venues to network and to learn more about professionalism within an academic environment and of course, to share intellectual ideas.

Thank you in advance, if you are able to support our Society, and in particular, our graduate students.  All you have to do is go to the Society main page at: https://historyofnavymedicine.org/contribute/ and hit contribute.  That will take you to our “donate” button.  All contributions are tax deductible.

Respectfully,

Annette Finley-Croswhite, Ph.D., Executive Director