Graduate Financial Assistance
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Graduate Funding
The Graduate Funding team oversees the administration of graduate fellowships, graduate assistantship hiring, graduate student teaching, and details related to the health insurance and tuition remission associated with the graduate funding opportunities.
Each year the College of Graduate Studies allocates tuition waivers for graduate assistantship students and university fellows. College/department budgets and faculty grants and contracts fund assistantship stipends and resident tuition for those who do not receive a tuition waiver.
Early admission decisions enable timely fellowship and assistantship funding offers that help UCF graduate programs compete for top-ranked applicants. The college coordinates all university funding offers and uses a Graduate Financial System to help track offers to support more complete and effective resource use.
Graduate Assistantships
The Graduate Funding team reviewed and approved 3,143 assistantship agreements for over 1,800 full-time enrolled graduate students supported on assistantships (GTAs, GRAs, and GAs) in 2022-2023. These appointments provide students with academic or professional development experience while at UCF that will help prepare them for their future work in research, teaching, or other activities. Graduate assistantship students receive a stipend for the duties that they perform, and UCF provides tuition remission and health insurance coverage for all qualifying assistantship appointments totaling 20 hours per week. While some graduate assistantships are available in non-academic units on campus, most assistantships are offered by a student’s graduate program or department.
Parental Leave for Graduate Assistants
The College of Graduate Studies offers a Parental Leave program for graduate students on existing assistantship agreements during pregnancy or immediately after the birth or adoption of their infant child. Approved parental leave is paid leave for up to six weeks but maybe a shorter period, depending on the student’s graduate assistantship agreement(s). In 2022-2023, 13 students were supported through the Parental Leave program.
Graduate Fellowships
In 2022-2023, UCF supported over 185 graduate students on competitive graduate fellowships that included a stipend, tuition remission, and health insurance. An additional 34 students received one-year Graduate Dean’s Fellowships of $5,000 as supplements to their graduate assistantship funding and 474 master’s, specialist, and doctoral students received a total of $238,050 in Graduate Presentation Fellowship funding in recognition of them presenting their research or scholarly activity at a professional meeting or conference.
The Office of Research and College of Graduate Studies (ORCGS) Doctoral Fellowship supports up to 102 new students each year and includes a one-year fellowship of $25,000 and a three-year commitment of GRA or GTA funding from the supporting program. Funding for the fellowship comes from the Office of Research ($11,000), the supporting program or college ($9,000), and the College of Graduate Studies ($5,000).
Each year the university’s Doctoral Fellowships Committee selects recipients of the Trustees ($25,000 per year) and the Presidential ($20,000 per year) Doctoral Fellowships that provide 4 years of competitive support including tuition and health insurance to incoming doctoral students. In 2022-2023, UCF supported 32 new and continuing doctoral students on these awards (23 Trustees and 9 Presidential Fellows).
The college also offers some discipline-specific fellowships. These awards include the Boyd Lyon Memorial Fellowship ($19,000 each year plus tuition and health insurance for two years) awarded every other year to a student in the Conservation Biology PhD program and the MFA Provost’s Graduate Fellowship ($10,000 plus tuition and health insurance for 2 years) that is awarded to up to eight new graduate students enrolling in a UCF Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program.
The Multidisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship ($20,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance) is available to continuing doctoral students and provides three years of support to an outstanding student engaged in innovative multidisciplinary research. This fellowship is offered to a current doctoral student each year with a total of 3 students supported on the fellowship in 2022-2023.
The Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship aims to increase dissertation completion among doctoral students. This award is intended for students in their final semester of graduate education who have a realistic expectation of degree completion in the Spring semester. The award is meant to allow students to forgo their non-research related employment obligations to concentrate on completing their dissertation. In 2022-2023, the College of Graduate Studies awarded 25 awards that included a $10,000 fellowship plus tuition and health insurance for the Spring 2023 semester.
In coordination with the Office of Research, the College of Graduate Studies also oversees the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program. In 2022-2023, we had 7 graduate students who declared tenure on the award. CGS has developed a webcourse in Canvas specifically for our NSF Graduate Fellows so that they have an opportunity to interact with other fellowship participants and access important information about their awards.
UCF Open Access Publishing Fund
In 2022-2023, the College of Graduate Studies provided awards of up to $1,500 to help cover article processing charges (APCs) for current and recent (within one year of graduation or employment) graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. This year, 32 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars across five colleges and representing multiple academic programs received a total of over $45,000 in funding.
Additional Fellowship Support
The College of Graduate Studies offers a variety of fellowships to support outstanding graduate students.
Additional opportunities include:
- Delores A. Auzenne Fellowships that provide $5,000 for one year to new or continuing graduate students.
- FAMU Feeder Doctoral Fellowships ($12,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance for 4 years) and Master’s ($10,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance for 2 years) for newly admitted graduate students who completed the Florida A&M University Feeder program as undergraduates.
- McKnight Doctoral Fellowships ($16,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance) that provide 5 years of funding from UCF and the Florida Education Fund (FEF)
- McNair Doctoral ($25,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance for 4 years) and Master’s ($10,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance for 2 years) Fellowships for incoming McNair Scholars
- Professional Doctoral Diversity Fellowships ($3,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance for 3 years) for students who are newly enrolling in one of UCF’s Professional Doctoral programs.
- RAMP Doctoral ($12,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance for 4 years) and Master’s ($10,000 per year plus tuition and health insurance for 2 years) Fellowships awarded to new graduate students who completed the UCF Research and Mentoring Program (RAMP) as undergraduates.
- The Summer Mentoring Fellowship ($4,500 plus tuition and health insurance in summer) is available to incoming graduate students who are working with a faculty mentor on a summer research project. Students are required to participate in a series of professional development workshops and give a final research presentation at the end of the summer semester. We welcomed 10 new students into the program in Summer 2022 and 15 students in Summer 2023.