GRADUATE

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Financial Considerations

All applicants to the PhD program are considered for departmental funding, both in the form of non-teaching fellowships, awarded on the basis of academic excellence, and of teaching assistantships/fellowships.  There is no additional financial aid application.

Assuming satisfactory academic progress, students entering the program with departmental funding will be offered five years of support.

School of Arts & Sciences (A&S) First-Year Fellowships:

Entering students may be nominated by the department for an A&S fellowship, or for the Provost’s Humanities Fellowship, which free recipients from teaching duties in their first year.  In addition, there are several University fellowships that are specifically designated for incoming U.S. (citizen or permanent resident) minority students, including the K. Leroy Irvis Fellowships and the Provost’s Development Fellowships.

Other Non-Teaching Fellowships

The Department nominates several outstanding continuing students each year to compete for University-wide, non-teaching fellowships:

            Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowships

            Lillian B. Lawler Dissertation Fellowships

            Foreign Languages and Area Studies Fellowships (FLAS)

(require the study of Portuguese or a Native American language during the year of the award, and restricted to US citizens and permanent residents who are pursuing the graduate certificate in Latin American Studies)

            Cultural Studies Program Fellowships

                        (for students pursuing the graduate certificate in cultural studies)

Graduate students in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures have fared very well in the competition for these fellowships, and each year, five or six students are supported in this way, allowing them a year free of teaching duties.  The Mellon and Lawler fellowships, in particular, are normally taken during the dissertation year.

Teaching Assistantships/Fellowships

Each year the department awards a number of teaching assistantships and fellowships to incoming graduate students and to continuing students in good academic standing.  Teaching assistantships are awarded on a competitive basis to incoming students and are continued in subsequent years (within the limits that apply to all PhD students in the graduate program) as long as they remain in good academic standing and successfully fulfill their teaching responsibilities.

Teaching assistants and fellows receive a stipend, full tuition remission, and UPMC health coverage every year, as compensation for teaching either one 5-credit course each term, or a combination of two 3-credits courses one term and a one 3-credit course the other.

Summer Teaching Assistantships/Fellowships

Subject to funding, and awarded according to seniority in the department, PhD students can expect to receive one summer teaching assistantship as part of their five years of support.

Salaries (2008-2009)

TA:      academic year, ~$15,065;

summer, ~$4,500, depending on teaching assignment

TF:       academic year, ~$15,675;

summer, ~$5,000, depending on teaching assignment

Summer Departmental Grants for Research in Pittsburgh

Every summer, subject to funding, the Department makes available five research grants of $3,000 to pre-proposal level PhD students, who must stay in Pittsburgh over the summer to carry out research or write, and who have no other source of funding (summer teaching assistantships or research support) to subsidize them.