Financial Support

Candidates should indicate in their applications whether they wish to be considered for assistantships. All applicants who express a need for assistance are considered for all appropriate university support. However, applicants are encouraged to seek outside funding for their graduate studies since Graduate School and program-based financial support is limited and these awards are highly competitive.

Graduate School financial support consists of university-wide Graduate School Assistantships, Graduate Recruitment Opportunity Assistantships, the Presidential Graduate Fellows Program, Out of State Tuition Waivers, and for Ph.D. students nearing the end of their programs of study, Dissertation Completion Awards. For more information, see the Graduate School website: http://www.uga.edu/gradschool/financial/gsfa.html

The Linguistics Program offers a number of assistantships to teach our introductory Linguistics course, and students in the Linguistics Program may also receive assistantships to teach English composition or foreign language courses. The normal TAship (3 courses per year) qualifies students for a tuition waiver in addition to the salary for teaching. All of these teaching assistantships require completion of TA training courses and/or apprenticeships, as well as a minimum amount of graduate coursework, and therefore are not typically available to students in their first year of graduate study.

Linguistics Program teaching assistantships are annual appointments for which renewal is contingent upon funding, in addition to satisfactory teaching evaluations and good progress towards the completion of degree requirements. Because of the limited amount of financial aid at our disposal, M.A. students normally will not receive a Linguistics Program teaching assistantship after their second year in the program, and Ph.D. students will normally not receive a teaching assistantship after their fourth year in the program. In practical terms, this translates to a maximum of one year of a TAship at the M.A. level and three years at the Ph.D. level, since most students are not eligible to teach in their first year of graduate study, as noted above. Other funding is also taken into account; e.g., a Ph.D. student who receives two years of a graduate-school sponsored assistantship would be limited to two additional years of program TA funding. While we regret that we are forced to impose these limits, note that students who have completed all degree requirements except for the thesis or dissertation are required to register for only 3 hours of credit per semester at the in-state tuition rate. Any M.A. students who do not complete their degrees in two years or Ph.D. students beyond the fourth year will normally qualify for this reduced tuition (for more information, see http://www.uga.edu/gradschool/academics/registration.html)

Travel Support

Doctoral students who present papers at academic conferences may apply for financial assistance. The Linguistics Program occasionally has a very limited amount of funding to subsidize travel to conferences, but in most cases travel grants must be sought from other offices of the university (e.g., the Graduate School and the Office of the Vice President for Research); we will assist students in applying for this funding. Note that the awards usually cover only a portion of the costs of a trip.