Financial Aid

GTAs are funded by the department and are normally restricted to doctoral students.

GTAs are normally only offered by the department when a faculty member strongly endorses an incoming student and does not currently have sufficient funds to support the student through their doctoral program. These are for a limited time to allow the faculty member to secure funding for the student’s doctoral research.

The GTA includes a tuition waiver, monthly stipend, and health insurance. Some departmental duties will be assigned for this GTA during the fall and spring semesters during which the student is enrolled. There are a very limited number of GTAs available for students which require them to conduct an undergraduate section of a laboratory course.  These are limited to students with good communication skills and who normally have received their BS from UT.

Students seeking a GTA should contact Jeffrey Reinbolt. A GTA is not meant to support the student through graduate school, and a GRA should be sought as soon as possible by the graduate student.

GRAs are offered directly by individual faculty from research funds they have obtained. The GRA includes payment of tuition, a monthly stipend, and health insurance. A GRA is meant to support the student while performing research required for the degree. Students seeking a GRA should contact faculty with research interests aligned with their own.

Beginning fall 2022, graduate students on assistantships will no longer pay mandatory fees (library fee, technology fee, etc.) and differential tuition (charges associated with certain colleges). Such fees will now be covered by the university.

Students with a minimum 3.6 GPA in all previous course work are eligible to apply for a Hilton A. Smith Graduate Fellowship and/or a UT Graduate School Fellowship. Information regarding these fellowships is available through the Office of Graduate Admissions.

Departmental fellowships are occasionally available to outstanding applicants. No specific application procedure exists for these fellowships. Opportunities also exist for students to apply for fellowships sponsored by their governments, industry, and technical societies.

The deans of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) have established the SEC Engineering Deans Graduate Fellow Program. This program provides top-off funds to augment the graduate stipends of selected newly admitted PhD students whose undergraduate engineering or related degrees are from another official SEC university.

The top-off stipend has a value of $5,000 per year for up to five years, based on the recipient’s satisfactory progress toward the completion of a PhD degree. Recipients will be officially recognized as SEC Engineering Deans Graduate Fellows and will be promoted by the participating universities both internally and in external engineering media outlets. Criteria and process for the SEC Engineering Deans Graduate Fellow program include:

• Applicant must have applied to the SEC school(s) for admission to the PhD program.
• Applicant must have received an undergraduate engineering or related degree at another official SEC university.
• Applicants must completely fill out the form located at the URL below. Completed forms should be sent to the appropriate contact at the college shown on the form.

Visit fellowship’s website for more information and to download the application..

The Student/Faculty Research Awards are awards to be used to advance the work for both faculty and graduate students.

Grants up to $5000 will be awarded to student/faculty pairs who submit proposals for funds to support research or creative projects. The funds may be used:

• to purchase supplies needed for research; for travel to work in other laboratories, libraries, or archives;
• for specialized training or in a variety of other ways, so long as the outcome will be the professional development of the graduate students and the advancement of an identified research/creative agenda of both the student and faculty member.

The Office of Research & Engagement’s Faculty Development Team (FDT) has identified many funding opportunities for Graduate Students and Post-Docs.  The opportunities span the academic fields of Science & Engineering, Humanities, Social Sciences, as well as opportunities in the UT Graduate School. View funding opportunities on the Office of Research & Engagement’s website.