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Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Graduate Student Funding

This document outlines how graduate students are typically funded with the Department, and what sources of temporary financial support are available.

First Year

First year students are generally supported by Assistantships distributed by the Graduate School or Dean's Office. Which of these sources is used to support a new graduate student is completely transparent to the student, and both pay Step 1 stipends, and offer student health insurance and payment of student fees as benefits. All incoming students, funded by these mechanisms are assigned both teaching responsibilities and are expected to become actively involved in Research Rotations.  The student is guaranteed a 12 months stipend regardless of the source. Technically, TAs from the Dean's Office are 10 month appointments running from September 1 to June 30, while RAs (from the Graduate School) are 12 month appointments running from September 1 to August 31.  For this reason, it is vitally important that a student be matched with a permanent advisor, with funding available, before the end of the June. The Department expects that students and faculty will work together towards this goal.

Second and Subsequent Years

Faculty are expected to support second year students from individual grants and contracts. Hence, it is very important that the number of new students requested by faculty, and subsequently admitted to the Graduate Program, be closely matched by available funding. However, the number of admissions and funding invariably fluctuates, and the Department is committed to full funding of all its existing students if at all possible. For this reason, a mechanisms is in place to support students in their second and subsequent years, who have a permanent advisor with no external funding. Such students are funded as Senior TA's.

Senior TAs are Departmentally funded Teaching Assistantships for senior students (Occasionally, if we have more available TAs and RAs than incoming students, these funding sources can also be used to fund senior students). Each faculty may have only one student supported by this mechanism, and the student must commit to completing all responsibilities associated with their TA assignment. This type of funding is a temporary "bridge" for faculty between funding, and not a permanent source of graduate student support. It allows faculty to generate data in the absence of funding, and affords students the chance to work with specific faculty irrespective of their funding situation. Senior TAs can only be appointed by the Department Chair since they are funded from outside the normal Graduate Program Budget. This bridging mechanism has several restrictions:

For these reasons, it is possible (though rare) that a student may have to change advisors after their first year.