Applications for the 2025 USDA Wallace-Carver Fellowship are closed.
The prestigious Wallace-Carver Fellowship offers exceptional college students the opportunity to collaborate with world-renowned scientists and policymakers through paid fellowships at leading USDA research centers and offices across the United States.
The fellows also participate in a high-level week-long Wallace-Carver Leadership Symposium in Washington D.C., hosted by USDA.
Initiated by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack in 2011, the United States Department of Agriculture and the World Food Prize Foundation partnered to create the Wallace-Carver Fellowship to inspire the next generation of American scientific and humanitarian leaders.
Named for Henry A. Wallace and George Washington Carver, two of the great American leaders in agricultural science and policy who made significant strides toward ending hunger in the 20th Century, the Wallace-Carver Fellowship seeks to educate, inspire and train the next generation of agricultural leaders, who will lead us in the 21st century.
In the summer of 2023, 13 fellows worked with USDA research centers and field offices across the country to analyze agricultural and economic policy; assist in the management of food, nutrition and rural development programs; and take part in groundbreaking field and laboratory-based research.
Since the creation of the Fellowship, 275 students from 111 universities and colleges in 38 states and the District of Columbia have been employed by the program.
Over 97% of the Fellows have pursued degrees in related disciplines and 88% are employed in critical fields relevant to science, agriculture, nutrition, economics and policy.
“The Wallace-Carver Fellowship exposes the best young minds in agriculture to the wide variety of opportunities available to them through civil service. Their experiences as Fellows will prepare these exceptional young leaders to carry out the vital research and innovation we will need to address the challenge of feeding a growing global population.”
- U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack
For more information, contact the World Food Prize Foundation Director of Internships and Youth Impact, Rebecca Picard at rpicard@worldfoodprize.org.