To apply for merit-based financial support, please download or pick up an application in the English Department and return it by March 1.

What should I know about financial support?

For general issues associated with financial aid, please see UAH Graduate Financial Aid page. There, you will find information about loans and procedures for obtaining need-based financial support.

In addition, the English Department has a limited number of opportunities for merit-based financial support. Because there are often more deserving students than we have money to support them, competition for these awards is keen. We offer two kinds of support for graduate students: Tuition scholarships and Graduate Teaching Assistantships.  

Tuition scholarships will cover all or part of your tuition for an academic year. The Department generally has two such scholarships to distribute, and most often divides them to provide partial support to a greater number of students.

Graduate Teaching Assistantships require you to take a minimum of nine (9) hours of coursework per semester and work approximately 20 hours a week, generally including teaching one or more studio sections of EH 101S: Intensive Writing Studio each semester, and working as a consultant in the Student Success Center. Often GTAs will also conduct research or provide additional support to other faculty members if enrollments do not require their presence in the classroom; the Director of Freshman Composition and the Director of English Graduate Studies (often with a committee) will make such assignments. Assistantships typically must be held for an entire academic year, although sometimes offers are made with a spring semester starting date. They cover tuition and pay a stipend each semester. Students may not hold other paid employment during the time of the appointment. Because the Department generally supports GTAs for the duration of their program (assuming both their teaching and their degree are going well), we often have only two or three openings for new GTAs each year, with another three or four GTAs continuing into a second year.

The Department meets each spring to make awards, and reaches its decisions based on the students’ past academic performance. To apply for financial support, please download or pick up an application in the Department and return it by March 1.