New Stanford Postdoc Affordability Enhancements

January 19, 2022

Dear postdocs, 

🎉🎉🎉🎉 Please join SURPAS in celebrating our victory for postdocs 🎉🎉🎉🎉

We want to emphasize two of the President and Provost’s announcement that SURPAS leadership team, the council members and all postdocs have been a part of.

Below is a snippet from the recent announcement:

• Increased family grant program for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars: These programs provide financial support for individuals with dependent children to help cover expenses such as childcare, health care and rent. The maximum annual family grant for graduate students will be increased from $15,000 to $20,000, and the maximum for postdocs will be increased from $5,000 to $10,000. These increases will be effective immediately; pro-rated increases in funding will be made retroactively for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who have received awards since September 2021. More information is available on the web about the Graduate Family Grant and the Postdoctoral Scholars Family Grant.
• New pilot program to provide transitional housing for new postdocs: In the spring we will launch a pilot program to provide short-term rental housing near campus for newly arriving postdoctoral scholars. This temporary, transitional housing will allow postdocs to settle into their research groups and to search for permanent housing from a convenient, furnished location. This pilot, based on recommendations from the Affordability Task Force, recognizes that postdocs face barriers to housing, such as arriving without credit history and, in some cases, without Social Security numbers, as well as assessing rentals and securing a lease from a distance.

The SURPAS leadership team is so excited and proud that postdocs voices have been heard! This gives us so much more motivation to keep our efforts going!

Thank you for your continued support,

SURPAS