Sign here, succeed here

Kathryn Wilcox was weighing full scholarships and research lab positions at both Case Western Reserve and the University of Chicago when the Case School of Engineering called with one more enticement: How about a $5,000 signing bonus?

Soon, she was signing on the dotted line.

“I was pretty indecisive. I was still deciding,” said Wilcox, who was also being courted by her alma mater, Texas A&M University. “So it did factor in my decision.”

Now she’s pursuing her doctorate at the Case School of Engineering and helping to launch a new lab in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering. The former salutatorian of her high school class in Beaumont, Texas, is right where Case wants her to be.

Thanks to the generosity and creativity of an alumnus, Case has added a shiny new lure to its recruitment package. With an initial $265,000 gift, Lee Swanger ’68, PhD, made possible Swanger Fellowships that are now being awarded to top graduate students. In October, he committed another $250,000 to the program, assuring there will be Swanger Fellows for years to come.

This fall, 15 students were named to the inaugural class of Swanger Fellows. The distinction comes with a cash award that they can spend any way they wish.

“It’s just like an athlete getting a signing bonus, except we’re giving them to students,” said Christian Zorman, PhD, the Associate Dean of Research at the Case School of Engineering.

Zorman said he’s heard of a few other schools offering such bonuses and that he expects others to follow. By attracting top graduate students, a research university can enhance its reputation and attract more research funds.

“Research dollars come about when you have top flight PhD students to do the research,” he said. “We know these students have choices.”

So does Swanger. He was one of them. The valedictorian of his class at Willoughby South High School, Swanger took a Case engineering degree to Stanford University, propelled by a Hertz Fellowship that he said allowed him freedom to pursue research. After 35 years as a materials engineer and consultant, Swanger said he wanted to help his alma mater by boosting its research power. The dean’s office had been mulling signing bonuses and

Swanger liked the idea. He allowed a research fellowship he created in 2018 to be re-directed into a more assertive recruiting tool.

“This is a way to get these top students to consider the unique experience they are going to have at Case,” he said.

The bonuses come with no strings attached, which Swanger thinks is important, as they lend graduate students a rare windfall. He smiled to learn of one Swanger Fellow who used the award to take the family to see The Lion King.

Shane Riddle, a Swanger Fellow in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, intends to use his bonus to attend conferences in his specialty, robotics. He said he was startled by the offer.

“I never heard of such a thing,” he said. “It certainly helped sway the decision. The extra $5,000 would be helpful no matter what. But it really takes the pressure off being an underfunded grad student.”

Wilcox used part of her bonus to pay for her move north. She said it helped nudge her toward a fruitful decision.

She’s now a research assistant to Assistant Professor Svetlana Morozova, PhD, a polymer physics specialist who joined the faculty this year. Wilcox is helping her build a lab that will, among other things, explore collagen structures with the aim of creating therapeutic materials to treat diseases like arthritis and Alzheimer’s.

She thinks her bonus lured her toward something special.

“I needed a new perspective,” she said. “I needed to go where polymer engineering began. And I don’t regret that one molecule.”

Kathryn Wilcox in her polymer physics lab, where she operates light scattering instruments