Financial Information
A. INFORMATION ON GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS AND RESEARCH GRANTS
You should make early and regular visits to the Office of Information and Communication (307 Bynum Hall) for help in seeking research funds. You can also find Graduate Funding opportunities and information about funding workshops on the web at: http://research.unc.edu/
The department makes every effort to support students but there are not enough teaching and research assistantships to provide stipends to all students every semester. To increase your overall chances of funding and to avoid disappointment you are strongly encouraged to seek other sources of funding. While we will also circulate notices to you of some funding competitions through the year, it is best to go to 307 Bynum Hall, for external government and foundation sources for study stipends and for research costs, and the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid, for information on federal work-study funds and work-study and/or research assignments in Anthropology.
Awards are made near the end of the academic year (late April-early May) after faculty meetings to consider each student’s progress, including particular performance in the Core (for 1st year students) and 4th Semester Papers and Study Plans (for 2nd year students).
For the purposes of awarding assistantships, faculty members rank those students with whom they have had recent (within the last two years) interaction in a course, as an advisee, a committee member, an RA or a TA. Rankings are based on a combination of academic achievement and satisfactory performance as a TA (substantive efforts to improve are taken into account). The combined faculty rankings are used in making funding decisions. Because academic achievement is (or should be) affected by experience, students are divided into groups (incoming or first year, second year, third year, four year plus), and awards are made based on ranking within the groups. When funds are short, first, second and third year students are given priority over senior graduate students, who have had four or more years of funding. One assumption is that senior graduate students have more opportunities for external funding.
C. THE HONIGMANN AND POLGAR FUNDS
Two special sources for student support in the department are the John Honigmann and Steven Polgar Funds. The Honigmann Fund provides an annual prize for outstanding graduate work in general anthropology and also provides emergency personal loans. Please see the Business Officer to receive and pay back your loan. The Polgar Fund provides an annual prize for outstanding work in applied anthropology.
D. LIMITATIONS OF FINANCIAL SUPPORT
1. Eligibility for Departmental Awards
Students must have submitted an acceptable fourth semester paper and had the Ph.D. Study Plan declared in effect in order to be eligible for any kind of financial aid administered by the department after the fourth semester.
Two semesters seem an appropriate time limit to seek financial support for students who have completed fieldwork (or the equivalent) and are engaged in writing doctoral dissertations. The Awards Committee will take this point under advisement.
2. Tuition Remissions and Instate Awards
The Graduate School does not allow more than ten semesters of tuition remission and/or in-state tuition awards.
Semesters in which the student does not receive a tuition award (remission and/or instate tuition) from the Graduate School do not count toward the ten semester limit. Students who complete a degree in one academic program and then enroll in another academic program or change academic programs without receiving a degree are only eligible for the 10 semesters as noted above during their enrollment at the University. No student is eligible for more than a total of ten (10) semesters of tuition remission and/or in-state tuition awards during their enrollment at the University, regardless of rate of remission or award.