Prospective Students
Graduate Students Financial Support
Upon recommendation of the department, several types of financial aid are available to graduate students: full or partial remission of fees and tuition, fellowships, research assistantships, teaching assistantships, readerships, and travel grants. Graduate students are eligible for one or a combination of the six forms of financial support.
Fellowships and research assistantships are granted by the Office of Graduate Studies (OGS) upon the recommendation of the department. Teaching assistants are appointed by the department upon the recommendation of the Graduate Committee and by the college writing programs. Readers are appointed by the department upon the recommendation of the professor whose course requires such assistance. At the discretion of the department, half-time graduate students are eligible for 25% TAships or GSRships.
For a small number of outstanding incoming students, the department will award a four year package of guaranteed funding which would include two years of a fellowship and two years of employment as a teaching assistant.
For more student financial support visit the OGSR website http://www-ogsr.ucsd.edu/financialinfo/index.htm.
Departmental policy has been to seek seven years of support for qualified students in the program. In recent years most students needing support have received either fellowships, or teaching assistant, research assistant positions. To the extent that resources are insufficient to meet the need, the department, on the advice of the Graduate Committee, will rank students using a combined criterion of academic performance and financial need.
Graduate students must maintain a minimum grade-point average of 3.0 to be considered for any type of financial aid. Financial support is not renewed automatically but is approved by the department on a yearly basis.
Please check with OGS's website for the tuition and fees chart, http://www.ogsr.ucsd.edu/financialinfo/gradstudent/tuition_fees/index.htm. OGS grants partial remission of fees for nine quarters after advancement to candidacy (for the duration of what is known as "normative time") if students have advanced by the end of the third year of study. (If students delay advancement, the number of normative time quarters is reduced accordingly.) After expiration of normative time, students must complete the dissertation or resume full payment of fees.
Tuition/Fee Scholarships
Within the limits
of available funds, tuition scholarships are also available to graduate
students who are not legal residents of the state of California. Students
who are citizens of the United States qualify for California residency
before their second year at UCSD. It is the responsibility of the student
to file a declaration of residency. It is the policy of OGS not to offer
tuition assistance to continuing students after their first year of graduate
school.
To the extent that funds are available,
tuition and/or fee scholarships may be offered to continuing students
not otherwise receiving support. Under university policy, only graduate
students with a minimum grade point average of 3.0 or better are eligible
for tuition and/or fee scholarships.
OGS grants partial remission of fees after advancement to candidacy (for
the duration of what is known as “normative time”). Upon enrolling,
a student has six years of normative time. Whenever a student delays advancement,
the number of normative time quarters is reduced accordingly. After expiration
of normative time, students must complete the dissertation or resume full
payment of fees.
Dissertation/Fellowship Scholarships
For some continuing students who have advanced to candidacy and need support, funding may be available for dissertation research. Funds to provide dissertation-year fellowships fall far short of the need. Graduate students wishing such support must apply to extramural sources and submit copies of those applications together with a formal application to the department for dissertation-year support. Dissertation fellowships awarded by the department from block grant funds normally include a stipend (presently $9,000) and scholarships for the payment of fees and, if applicable, non-resident tuition. In some cases, the department may find it necessary to reduce the amount of the stipend and fee and tuition assistance in an effort to provide support to a larger number of students. All dissertation fellowships are offered contingent on the student’s formal advancement to candidacy prior to July 1st of the year of the award.
The graduate students from the Department of History have available research assistantships from two main sources: 1) Academic Senate or extramural funds assigned to faculty in support of their research; 2) positions from CILAS. For a research assistantship assigned by a faculty member, work involves bibliographies, research data processing, data collection, editing, etc. Individual faculty assign and monitor actual work, which is not to exceed 20 hours per week for a 50% appointment, or 10 hours per week for a 25% appointment. For those research assistants funded from CILAS, their duties are in the form of internships or apprenticeships. Supervising faculty are obligated to design work that is supportive of the training and needs of the student. In such cases, workloads are also flexible so as to allow students to adjust to the graduate school context.
Taships
Undergraduate teaching, for which graduate teaching assistants earn regular academic credit, is an integral part of the graduate program at UCSD. To prepare for an academic career, the Ph.D. candidate is encouraged to assist in courses offered by the department either as a course reader (grader) or teaching assistant.Graduate students in the Department of History are employed as teaching assistants not only in departmental courses (primarily at the lower division level), but also in the foreign-language programs in the Department of Linguistics and in the Chinese Studies Program, and in the undergraduate college writing programs, such as Making of the Modern World, the Dimensions of Culture, and the Revelle Humanities sequence. Teaching assistants are normally appointed at 50% time and are expected to work an average of twenty hours per week, which include attending lectures, scheduling two hours per week for office visits, reading papers and exams, and preparing and teaching their own sections. The teaching of sections is most important for training to become future college instructors. The distribution of hours among these tasks varies from program to program.
Training of teaching assistants is the responsibility of the program in which the teaching is done. In the Department of History first-year teaching assistants attend one four-hour training session given by the Center for Teaching Development prior to the beginning of instruction in the Fall Quarter. In addition, the chair of the department selects a faculty member to serve as the teaching coordinator, and one graduate student senior teaching assistant. In the event a teaching assistant has questions or problems they need to resolve, the coordinator or the senior teaching assistant are available throughout the year for advising.
During the week prior to the beginning of instruction in the Fall Quarter, teaching assistants in the Department of Linguistics and the college writing programs attend several sessions of training in teaching methods and in the specific course content. This training continues throughout the academic year in weekly staff meetings.
The instructor with the primary responsibility for the course evaluates teaching assistants. The instructor visits a teaching assistant’s section at least once each quarter and reviews a representative sample of papers and exams for fairness and consistency of grading. The instructor prepares a written evaluation of the teaching assistant at the end of the quarter and discusses that evaluation with the teaching assistant. The teaching assistant acknowledges the instructor’s comments by signing the evaluation.
The department considers experience in teaching an important part in a graduate student’s professional training. Based upon financial aid forms that graduate students complete during the previous winter quarter, the Graduate Committee assigns History Department teaching assistantships and recommends teaching assistantships outside of the department for the upcoming academic year.
Students must maintain a minimum grade point average of 3.0 in order to receive academic employment on campus.
Continuing students within the first four years of study will be given preference for assistantships over incoming students. Students beyond the first four years of study will be considered after others’ needs have been met. Master’s students do not receive financial aid from the department or the university except in extraordinary cases such as course readerships.
Funds are also available to assist graduate students with travel and research expenses. A maximum of $1500 may be awarded to assist with the costs of travel, subsistence, and expenses for research purposes, and a maximum of $500 may be granted for travel to present a paper at a scholarly meeting. Preference for these awards, especially in the research category, will be given to students who are advanced to candidacy and within normative time limits. Awards may be reduced below the maximum allowable, if the demand exceeds the resources of the fund. A call for applications for assistance from this fund will be issued by the Graduate Committee in the spring of each year. In addition, some of our students studying abroad under the UC Education Abroad Program receive travel support from EAP.
