PsiGuy

Yeah, I figured it wouldn't look so good. I do also want it to exist to help out other students, but to be honest I don't know if I would have the time or "social prowess" to set it up and get a donor and all that administration stuff. In some informal discussions I know there are a couple of other students that think we should have an award too so it might be possible to get a quorum and approach someone for an unfunded "acknowledgement". Or maybe once (if?) I've made it as a well payed professor (ha!) or in the real world ;/. The small external route is probably best, I'll keep looking for those.

I am trying to graduate soon and would like to at least try to get some extra bits for the hard work I've put into my PhD. Unfortunately, as far as I can find, there aren't any PhD or dissertation awards at my university (R1) that I can even apply for. I've emailed someone at the grad school to see if I completely missed them but have not heard back yet. So my question: Is it possible to ask for a award to be made so that I can apply for it without it sounding horribly egotistical? I know I am not the best student in the history of our school or probably department, likely far from that, but I feel and have gotten the impression that I've done some pretty good work and would like to at least try for an award. Most of the taglines for the professors in my field I respect the most (and some grad students/postdocs) have one or several graduate level awards so I feel it would look not so good if I were to have none in my CV. Our department is small (~30 grad students) and not too old so that might be why there isn't a department specific award. On the university side, I've seen a handful of awards for the social sciences and humanities but none for the hard sciences... Any advice on how to potentially approach this subject with someone, who would be the best person to approach, and if it would just end up making me look worse to try would be much appreciated.