Financial Support for Graduate Students

When reviewing your application, the School answers three questions. Do you meet the admission criteria? Do you have an advisor? Is financial support available, if necessary? The third question is answered only after the first two are answered in the affirmative.

The School has a limited budget paid by Florida taxpayers to provide financial support to graduate students on a competitive basis. This support is in the form of fellowships or assistantships and tuition payments. The School does not have financial support for research expenses. Some students obtain research assistantships and tuition payment from research grants administered by faculty. Such opportunities may arise during applicants' discussions with faculty about research interests and advisement. And some students are self-funded.

Students are liable for some per-credit-hour fees that cannot be waived nor paid from state funds.

Costs of Attendance

Fellowships

Fellowships are stipends with no work requirement. Students appointed on fellowships must be registered full-time to make rapid progress on their programs of study--12 credit hours each in Fall and Spring Semesters and 8 in Summer Semester, for a total of 32 credits per year.

Graduate Alumni Fellowships--Funded at nationally competitive levels, these are the highest graduate student awards available at the University. These prestigious awards support students seeking the doctoral degree. Successful applicants have outstanding academic preparation, a strong commitment to the field of study, and demonstrated potential in research. To maximize opportunity to succeed, the fellowships provide a full four years of support. This includes a minimum of two years of full fellowship and at least one year of research or teaching assistantship. Using this opportunity to gain significant teaching experience is strongly encouraged, because most Graduate Alumni Fellows intend to become leaders in academic research and teaching. Application and selection are administered through the School.

Named Presidential Fellowships--These fellowships for doctoral students are intended to support graduate research. Funds for the first and fourth year are provided by the Graduate School and funds for the second and third years are provided by the SNRE or by research grants. Application and selection are administered through the School.

Grinter Fellowships--These fellowships provide supplemental funding to recruit outstanding doctoral students, in cases where assistantship funds are insufficient. The awards are added to assistantships and they continue for multiple years, ordinarily for the duration of the student's assistantship funding. Application and selection are administered through the School.

Adaptive Management Fellowships--These fellowships are for doctoral students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents taking a specific curriculum on Adaptive Management: Water, Wetlands, and Watersheds. This curriculum may be taken within the Interdisciplinary Ecology Ph.D. program or within other degree programs such as Environmental Engineering Sciences, Soil and Water Science, Political Science, Geography, etc. To be considered for these fellowships, you must apply directly to the program. For details see the AM:W3 application guidelines.

Amazon Conservation Leadership Initiative Scholarships--These two-year scholarships are for master's or doctoral students who are residents of the nine Amazon Basin countries (French Guyana, Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil) who are enrolled in the Interdisciplinary Ecology program or any other graduate degree program affiliated with the Tropical Conservation and Development Program. To be considered for these fellowships, you must apply directly to the program. For details see the Amazon Conservation Leadership Initiative guidelines.

TCD Graduate Fellowships (Tropical Conservation and Development)--These fellowships are for masters's or doctoral students. The majority of recipients are from Latin American and Caribbean nations. Recipients are required to participate in TCD Program-sponsored activities and to complete the 12-15 credit TCD interdisciplinary concentration. To be considered for these fellowships, you must apply directly to the program. For details see the TCD Graduate Fellowship guidelines.

Gordon and Betty Moore Graduate Scholarships for Tropical Conservation in the Andes-Amazon Region)--These scholarships are for masters's or doctoral students who are residents of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela and who are studying tropical forest conservation of the Andes-Amazon region. Recipients will be required to participate in TCD Program activities and to complete the requirements of the TCD interdisciplinary concentration as part of their degree program. To be considered for these scholarships, you must apply directly to the program. For details see the Moore Graduate Scholarship guidelines.

FLAS Academic Year Fellowships (Foreign Language and Area Studies)--These fellowships are for master's or doctoral students who are studing selected foreign languages. To be considered for these fellowships, you must apply directly to the program. For Brazilian Portuguese or Haitian Creole, see the FLAS Academic Year Scholarships guidelines administrated by the Center for Latin American Studies. For languages of Africa, see the FLAS Fellowships guidelines administered by the Center for African Studies.

Assistantships

Assistantships provide pay for work as a teaching or research assistant. The School ordinarily funds one-third-time assistantships that pay the conventional rate paid by the department where the advisor is located. Ordinarily the assistantship work is assigned by the advisor rather than by the School, except when the agreement is to work as teaching assistant for the School's undergraduate capstone course, Critical Thinking in Environmental Science. Students appointed on assistantships must be registered for at least 9 course credit hours each in Fall and Spring Semesters and 6 in Summer Semester, for a total of 24 credits per year.

Tuition Payments

Graduate students who are appointed on fellowships or assistantships will have their tuition paid by the School, up to the number of course credit hours detailed above.

Out-of-State Tuition

Out-of-state graduate tuition costs approximately four times as much as in-state tuition. U.S. citizens who are not Florida residents can become eligible for the in-state tuition rate by obtaining a Declaration of Domicile, Florida driver's license, and various other documents at least 12 months prior to applying for residency for tuition purposes. These records should be in your possession before the Fee Payment Deadline of your first semester. Then you should submit a Request for Change in Residency Status form to the Office of Admissions, no later than the Fee Payment Deadline for the semester in which you seek reclassification. Requests received after this date will not be reviewed

This step can save many thousands of dollars over the course of your program of study. If you are eligible to seek Florida residency for tuition purposes but you do not do so, the out-of-state portion of the tuition (matriculation fee) will be billed to you personally, not paid by the University.

The procedure for applying for Florida residency is described in the Graduate Handbook.

Support for International Students

The School does not have centrally-administered funds available for international students. International students may, however, obtain financial support on a case-by-case basis from research grants administered by their faculty advisors. In cases where international students bring their own funding through a scholarship or fellowship, the School tries on a case-by-case basis to provide complementary funds, for example for tuition, if needed to make the proposed program of study feasible.

Florida law provides that a student who is a citizen of a Latin American or Caribbean country and has a U.S. federal or state fellowship or scholarship is considered a Florida citizen for tuition purposes. This means that such students qualify for the low in-state tuition rate, rather than the more costly out-of-state tuition. To encourage applicants to take advantage of this opportunity, the School will pay tuition of Fulbright or LASPAU scholars from Latin American or Caribbean countries, if the students are admissible and have advisors.

Non-Waivable Fees

In addition to tuition, there are non-matriculation fees (building, trust fund, resident and non-resident student financial aid, activity, athletic, and health fees) charged on a per-credit-hour basis, which are not waived nor paid by the School and thus are the student's responsibility.

Last Modified: 31-Jul-07