Funding Your Degree
There are three primary types of funding available to graduate students in the Department:
- Graduate teaching associateships from the Department or other academic units of the University;
- Graduate fellowships awarded by the Graduate School of the University;
- Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships awarded by the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies.
All fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis, with academic achievement as the principal criterion.
Graduate students in good standing in the Department who begin at the M.A. level are ordinarily supported for five years of graduate study (excluding summers) and students in good standing who begin at the Ph.D. level are ordinarily supported for three years (excluding summers). Additional years of support or summer support may be offered based on availability, the student's progress through the graduate program, departmental need (especially in the area of teaching), and other criteria.
Graduate Teaching Associateship
Graduate Teaching Associate (GTA) positions are normally made on a 50% FTE (full time equivalent) basis. This means that GAs are expected to spend 20 hours per week on duties related to their appointments (e.g., teaching responsibilities), and the remainder of the work week on class assignments, research, and other activities related to their degrees. New GTAs are also provided with extensive training to help them prepare for teaching.
Benefits of the graduate teaching associate include:
- Tuition and Fee Waiver - All graduate fellowships and GA positions (at least 50% FTE) include a waiver of tuition and general instructional fees. Both in-state (resident) and out-of-state (non-resident) tuition are waived entirely; graduate students holding eligible appointments are not responsible for paying any tuition or general instructional fees.
- Monthly Stipend - The amount of the monthly stipend varies depending on type of appointment and the student's rank (e.g., GAs receive a modest pay raise after successful completion of the Candidacy Exams), but the department strives to offer a stipend that is comparable to that in other language departments at OSU, competitive with stipends offered at peer institutions, and which is sufficient to cover basic living expenses in Columbus.
- Health Insurance Subsidy - The university subsidizes 85% of the cost of health insurance premiums for graduate students holding at least a 50% appointment as fellows or GAs, if they enroll in the OSU student health insurance program. For complete information about the cost of the student health insurance plan, see the Office of Student Life: Student Health Insurance.
- Summer Tuition Waiver - Academic-year (two-semester) associateships awarded by the University come with a summer session tuition waiver and partial fee waiver, without any work responsibilities. A monthly stipend is not included, however, nor is the health insurance subsidy. The summer tuition and fee waiver cannot be deferred; it must be used in the summer immediately following the academic-year appointment.
Graduate School Fellowship
The Graduate School awards one-year and multiple-year fellowships to entering graduate students. Prospective students are nominated by departments for these fellowships as part of the graduate application review process, and fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis. Students may not nominate themselves. More information about these and other graduate fellowships is available from the Graduate School.
The Graduate School also provides a variety of dissertation fellowships, including special awards for women and members of minority groups. Students are nominated for these fellowships by their departments, and the fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis.
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship
Under the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) program, the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (CSEEES) offers summer and academic year fellowships for graduate students who are pursuing a degree and need advanced training in language and area studies. CSEEES offers fellowships for students of the following languages:
- Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian
- Polish
- Romanian
- Russian
- Turkish*
- Uzbek
For more information on the FLAS Fellowship, please visit the CSEEES website.
Travel support
The Slavic Department offers its graduate students an annual allowance for conference travel, if the student is presenting a paper or poster at the conference, or is attending for job interviews. Ohio State also offers many small grants on a competitive basis that can be used for conference and research travel (e.g., the Arts and Humanities Graduate Research Small Grant). A partial list is available here. Summer research awards are also available through the department's endowed funds.
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