Dear Awards Contacts, Deans, Directors, and Grad Chairs,
I hope you are well today and that you had a restful and relaxing long weekend!
I am writing to you today regarding some changes to the Tri-Agency Canada Graduate Scholarships – Doctoral (CGS-D) and various Agency specific Doctoral scholarships. Late summer 2019 the Tri-Agencies announced
harmonization of their CGS-D program. With this harmonization comes a variety of changes – including harmonization of the CGS-D selection criteria across all three Agencies.
The new harmonized SSHRC, NSERC and CIHR CGS-D web page can be found by clicking here.
While some details remain the same as in previous years, I will do my best to highlight some of the changes for you here…
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All three Agencies now have
the same award selection criteria for the CGS-D – where as previously each agency had different requirements
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All applications for the Doctoral Tri-Agency Awards are now submitted online – including SSHRC (who has moved to an online system from their previous paper-based applications)
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The CIHR CGS-D competition was previously administered by the Office of Research Services (ORS), however, FGS has now taken over the administration of the CIHR CGS-D student awards given the harmonization
of the CGS-D program – NOTE: all current CIHR CGS-D and Doctoral Award Holders funding will still be administered via ORS until the funding is complete – only the applications and awards in the current competition and going forward will be administered
by FGS Awards
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Each Agency has their own application portal for the CGS-D and Doctoral Awards– found at the following links:
CIHR ResearchNet,
NSERC Application Portal,
SSHRC Application Portal
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Students are able to submit a single application online via the above noted portals and be considered for
both the CGS-D and the Agency specific doctoral scholarships (ie: for SSHRC Doctoral and NSERC PGS-D and CIHR Doctoral)
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Students are required to upload copies of the own official transcripts for SSHRC’s online application, whereas applicants for NSERC and CIHR are required to submit their official transcripts to me in
the Faculty of Graduate Studies and I will take care of uploading them to the student’s applications online –
PLEASE NOTE: even if it a student’s first term of study here at the University of Manitoba an official transcript showing current registration and courses in-progress is required for all applicants. Failure to include a current U of M transcript
could result in a student being deemed ineligible. The transcript requirements are outlined for students in each entry on our Awards Database for each award (linked farther down below)
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Changes specific to SSHRC CGS-D and Doctoral Fellowships: SSHRC has eliminated the requirement for the departmental appraisal. This means
that departments are no longer required to rank and nominate students for SSHRC CGS-D and Doctoral Fellowships. Students simply apply via the SSHRC online application portal linked above and their application will come directly to me in Graduate Studies
for preparation for review by the internal selection committee – one less step for departments to have to undertake this fall
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Our institutional internal deadline for submission of student’s applications online via the respective Agency application portals linked above is: Friday, September
27th, 2019 – (Please also note that NSERC and CIHR deadlines for submission of the official transcripts to my office is one week earlier – Friday,
September 20th, 2019) - this is due to the change in deadline upon which institutions must submit the recommended applicants to the respective Agencies. We now must submit all recommendations
for the Doctoral awards to the agencies by mid-November, 2019.
This final change – the unified institutional internal deadline - is probably the biggest change of all. In previous years each Agency had a different deadline for submission of the applications to them – so the
competitions were somewhat staggered based on the deadline set by each agency. However, with the Agencies now changing to a unified deadline it means we are now working towards recommending all students by the same date in November. In order to meet
this deadline, we have had to adjust our internal deadline accordingly.
I have had a few departments reach out to me about this new internal deadline of Friday, September 27th, 2019 – as I understand SSHRC’s deadline was traditionally later in the Fall term in previous years.
So, while I understand that September 27th, 2019 is an earlier than usual deadline for SSHRC Doctoral applicants to begin working on their applications, this is due to the Tri-Agency’s CGS-D harmonization process. In turn, the internal deadline
of September 27th, 2019 will now allow the required time for my office to review all applications for eligibility, prepare them for our internal selections committee review, then for the internal committees to meet and discuss which students will
be recommended, and to prepare the applications for forwarding to the respective agencies.
Finally, please note that these changes are only specific to the Tri-Agency Doctoral Scholarships – and do not affect the Vanier Doctoral Scholarships competition which is run separately (Vanier
details found by clicking here). I would also note that we have not been apprised of any major changes to the Tri-Agency Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master’s (CGS-M) competition to date. As such, we expect that the CGS-M competition will launch in
the next couple of months, with an early December deadline as has been the case for the past few years.
For additional details on the Tri-Agency CGS-D and Agency specific doctoral Scholarships competitions for this year, please visit the following links on our awards database where we have also outlined the application
procedures and also the specific transcript requirements for students:
CIHR
CGS-D and Doctoral Database Information
NSERC
CGS-D and PGS-D Database Information
SSHRC
CGS-D and Doctoral Awards Database Information
Please feel free to forward this message to others in your area who might also need these details.
Should you have any questions about any of the changes regarding the CGS-D harmonization, or about any Tri-Agency Master’s or Doctoral competition related details, you are welcome to contact me.
I thank you all for your patience as we work through these changes this year. I wish you all the best for a
wonderful start to the Fall term…take care!
-Sara
Sara Sealey
B.A., B.Sc.
Awards Officer
Faculty of Graduate Studies • University of Manitoba
500 University Centre • Winnipeg, Manitoba • R3T 2N2
T 204.474.6703 • F 204.474.7553
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