How will I be funded and what must I do to stay funded?
Linguistics
We offer beginning graduate students a guarantee that, subject to satisfactory
progress through the program, they can count on being supported from
some source throughout the first five years. In the past there has
sometimes been funding available even after the fifth year, but we
make no promises about that.
When you are admitted to Linguistics, the department will write you a
letter stating the terms of your future funding. Sources of funding
include university fellowships, teaching assistantships and research
assistantships, as well as external grants and fellowships from a wide
variety of organizations.
Professors in Linguistics apply for grants from funding agencies like NSF, NIH
and DARPA, or from industry (as you will see below, this is also what
professors in CSE do). If the grant applications are successful, we are able
to employ students as long-term research assistants. Working as an RA
on a grant is an excellent way of
to build a susbtantial publication
record, and to prepare for writing
grant applications of your own. The College of Humanities expects
professors in Linguistics to seek
external funding when this is
appropriate, but the chances of
attracting large grants do
inevitably vary from field to
field. Computational Linguists are
relatively well placed to obtain
such funding.
In Linguistics the most common pattern is to be supported
by a university fellowship in the first year, to take Linguistics 830
"Teaching Introductory Linguistics" in the Spring of that year and to
move into a teaching assistantship for the second and subsequent
years. In addition, several of our students are supported by
multi-year fellowships from NSF, which free them for full-time work on
their own research.
The official regulations for the graduate program are available in
the departmental handbook. This includes a timeline
of milestones for progress through the program. In essence we expect you
to keep on top of your coursework, to develop your research skills,
to treat your
teaching and/or research assistantships seriously and to work with your
advisor(s) to achieve the milestones promptly. We are aware that
individual circumstances differ, so minor variations from the
timeline are usually acceptable, but it is always a good idea
to discuss this with your advisor rather than silently letting things
drift.
CSE
Professors in CSE apply for grants from funding agencies like NSF, NIH
and DARPA, or from industry.
If the grant applications are successful,
the professors will be able to offer research assistantships.
The normal pattern is that
students are supported from other sources in their first year, then
join a grant-funded project once they know more about how their
interests align with the goals of the project. Because grant funding
is unpredictable, professors in CSE will not always have openings in
their labs. Sometimes the answer to "Can you fund me?" will be "Yes",
sometimes "No", sometimes "Wait and See".
The College of Engineering expects all professors to seek and obtain
grant funding (this is after all
engineering) so engineering students are proportionately more likely
then humanities students
to work on grants and proportionately less likely to be heavily
involved in teaching. This is a
tendencey rather than a rule: your choice of department should be
dictated by your interests rather than your expectations about funding.
As in Linguistics, if you have personal funding from NSF or another
external source you get greater freedom. We also seek out funding
from university and departmental resources.
Complex situations
Linguistics students do work on projects in CSE and Psychology, as
well as the other way round.
Typically this happens when the student has specific skills that the
project needs. In
these cases the details of funding
arrangements will probably be
quite complicated, but you won't
be worse off than you would be
sticking with the department. The
key thing to understand is that the home department is where the buck
stops, and the one responsible for
making sure you get what you are promised.
