Funding

There are three major types of funding available to graduate students: Graduate Assistantships; tuition and partial fee waivers; and awards and fellowships. Graduate Assistantships refers to a class of graduate student jobs that includes Graduate Assistants (which generally perform clerical or administrative work), Research Assistants, and Teaching Assistants. When an assistantship position meets certain criteria, it comes with an assistantship waiver that covers tuition and select (not all) fees. The Graduate College also grants departments a limited number of standalone tuition and partial fee waivers (that don’t require an assistantship or fellowship). Finally, the department and the Graduate College offer a number of awards and fellowships that students can apply for at various stages of their program. Advanced PhD students are encouraged to seek external (non-UIC) funding opportunities as well.

As of Fall 2024, the Department of History provides a guaranteed five-year funding package to all new doctoral students (though students admitted with a Graduate College fellowship receive a different funding package). For each of the first five years, PhD students receive:

• 50% FTE Teaching Assistantships (TAs) in the Fall and Spring semesters
  • These TA positions include tuition and partial fee waivers that cover much—but not all—of the cost of attendance
  • Salary is determined by the collective bargaining agreement for the union that represents TAs, the Graduate Employee Organization
• A History Doctoral Award (HAD) of $5,000
  • The HDA stipend is paid out in nine monthly installments over the course of the Fall and Spring semesters.

After your first five years, if you have been advanced to candidacy and you make good progress towards dissertation completion, you may apply for additional departmental TA positions. While TA positions beyond the first five years are not guaranteed (as it depends on circumstances beyond departmental control, such as university budgetary issues or the level of undergraduate enrollment), we often award positions to sixth-year (and sometimes seventh-year) students who request them. If you have been admitted under our previous funding policy (a four-year package), you are encouraged to apply for a departmental TA position in your fifth and sixth years.

The department does not provide funding for History MA or MAT students, though students in these programs often find waiver-bearing assistantships elsewhere on campus. The Graduate Program Coordinator will share assistantship openings on the graduate student listserv, but students also are encouraged to look for positions on UIC Careers and the student jobs platform Handshake. Many academic and administrative units also post open Graduate Assistantships on their websites and social media.

Graduate students also may be eligible for loans through Student Financial Aid.

Almost all assistantships in the Department of History are Teaching Assistantships (TA), but from time to time a Research Assistantship (RA) may become available. Most PhD students receive a commitment from the department upon admission regarding Teaching Assistant appointments for their first five years in the program. (The exception would be students admitted to the PhD program with a Graduate College fellowship.) TA positions are normally reserved for PhD students, though on rare occasions History MA and MAT students may be considered if there are not enough doctoral students to fill all open TA positions. Fall and Spring assistantships that last for at least 91 consecutive calendar days and are for 25-67% time also come with tuition and partial fee waivers. For general information about assistantships, consult the Graduate College website.

If you have been granted an assistantship for the first time, you will need to complete the new employee onboarding process in a timely fashion to ensure that your first paycheck is issued on time. You will receive a formal letter of offer from the unit at least 45 days before the position start date, which you will sign and return to the HR Associate for History to confirm acceptance. After you have formally accepted the position, the HR Associate for will initiate your onboarding. You will receive emails prompting you to complete a series of forms in the UI New Hire system (demographic info, direct deposit, required online trainings, etc.) and Section 1 of the I-9 form in the Tracker I-9 system to verify your identity and work eligibility. For the I-9, you also are required to bring original, unexpired documents from the USCIS List of Acceptable Documents to the HR Associate for review, preferably a few weeks before your start date. Ideally, the onboarding should be completed at least two weeks before your start date, but legally, the I-9 must be completed by your start date at the absolute latest. Failure to complete these steps on time may result in a later start date, and a late (and/or smaller) first paycheck.

Once you have completed the UI New Hire Forms and I-9, you can begin your duties on your start date. Paychecks are typically issued on the 16^th of every month, though there is some variation depending on what day of the week the 16^th falls on and holidays. You can find a complete payroll schedule on the U of I Business and Finance website (though you will need to login with your NetID and password to access this page).

Assistantship waivers are typically posted to student accounts in the week or two after the online add/drop deadline for a given semester. Please keep in mind that students must register for at least eight (8) credit hours each Fall and Spring they hold an assistantship in order to maintain eligibility. Students may be forced to forfeit their assistantship positions and waivers if they fail to register for at least eight hours.

In the Fall semester, first-time Teaching Assistants (usually those in year one) must enroll in HIST 500 (CRN) with the current Director of Graduate Studies for one credit hour. This workshop will help students better understand their responsibilities as teaching assistants (and the limits of those responsibilities) and allow them to exchange ideas and advice with their peers. In addition, first-time TAs are very strongly encouraged to attend a campus-wide orientation for new TAs in mid-August.

Doctoral students in their first five years of study are automatically assigned Fall and Spring TA positions. PhD students in years six and up can be added to the TA pool by submitting a Post-HDA TA Application in the spring. Advanced PhD students with ABD status also can apply to teach a course as instructor of record (ABD Instructor Applications are solicited each semester such opportunities are available; departmental needs for ABD instructors vary by semester). Doctoral students in any year also can submit an Online TA Application if they wish to be considered for one of our limited online TA positions. Post-HDA and Online TA applications are distributed via the graduate student listserv each spring, while ABD Instructor applications are issued via the listserv each semester those positions are available.

Assignments to students in years six and up are made taking into consideration individual students’ progress towards dissertation completion and the number of TA-ships they had held after their first four (or five) years of funding. Progress is assessed using the following criteria: exams passed, prospectus defended, research completed, amount of writing completed, and overall amount of time in the program.

If you are in year seven and up and are not awarded a position during the first round of TA assignments (which takes place in May-June), your name is placed on the waiting list if TA openings become available later in the summer. The ranking is based on the criteria described above.

You typically will receive an email notification if you are awarded a TA position in May or June.

See the Teaching Assistant Policies for more information on how the History Department assigns and manages TA assignments.

Each semester, the Graduate College grants the History Department a limited number of standalone tuition and partial fee waivers, called allocated waivers, that the department then distributes. These stand-alone waivers are distinct from the tuition and partial fee waivers received as compensation for a qualifying Graduate Assistantship and those received as part of a fellowship package. The department has a limited number of full-time (9+ credit hours in Fall and Spring; 3+ in Summer) and part-time (1-8 credit hours in Fall and Spring; 1-3 in Summer) waivers to distribute. Each semester, students interested in receiving an allocated waiver for the next term are asked to apply for consideration by completing an online form. The request forms are shared via the departmental graduate student listserv.

Allocated waivers are awarded on a semesterly basis. Priority is given to PhD students nearing completion on their program, though MA and MAT students also are welcome to apply for allocated waivers.

In addition to assistantships and allocated waivers, the History Department also offers a number of internal awards and fellowships. As part of the five-year PhD funding package, doctoral students receive a History Doctoral Award (HDA) of $5,000 for each of the first five years. The HDA is paid out in nine monthly installments alongside the TA salary over the course of the nine-month regular academic year. On occasion, the department may find it has spare HDA funds to distribute (i.e., there is HDA money left over after disbursing awards to all the PhD students in their first five years), and in most cases, these funds will be distributed among the doctoral  student TAs in year six (and in rare cases, if funds allow, TAs in years seven and possibly eight). The amount of these “bonus” HDAs will depend on the number of students eligible for them, and may be slightly less than $5,000. However, HDAs will always be issued in the amount of $5,000 for the nine-month regular academic year for doctoral students still receiving the funding packages offered upon admission.

The department also runs two internal awards contests each year. In the Fall, the History Graduate Advisory Committee solicits applications for Small Department Awards (which are typically $5,000 or less and do NOT come with tuition and partial fee waivers), and in the Spring, applications for the Large Dept. Awards (which are usually large enough to support students for one or two semesters and do include tuition and partial fee waivers). Applications are distributed via the graduate student listserv each semester. The amounts for all departmental awards vary from year to year, depending on the funds available. See the “Graduate Awards” section on the History Awards page for more information about specific awards.

History graduate students also are encouraged to apply for awards and fellowships offered by the Graduate College and University of Illinois system. For more information, please see the Graduate College’s Fellowships and Awards page. Students are expected to apply for external funding opportunities as well. The Graduate College also maintains a helpful Other Funding page of internal and external funding opportunities and resources.