The Department of Psychology at Florida State University makes every effort to provide financial assistance for doctoral students in good standing in the department. Students typically receive some kind of financial support throughout their graduate education. Sources of financial support include:
A special application for financial assistance is not required. Waivers of in-state and out-of-state tuition typically accompany financial assistance awards.
Research Assistantships involve laboratory work, running subjects, analyzing data, designing experiments, etc. Assistantships typically require 10 - 20 hours of work per week, and funding is provided by individual faculty grants.
Teaching Assistantships involve actual classroom instruction, most commonly the teaching of PSY 2012: General Psychology, or a Laboratory course in Research Methods, Cognitive Psychology, Conditioning and Learning, Sensation and Perception, or Physiological Psychology. Additional information about the excellent teacher training program offered by the Department may be found here.
Departmental Assistantships are available to incoming students during their first year of study and generally involve activities that support faculty and teaching assistants in the teaching of their undergraduate courses, e.g., grading and proctoring exams.
Community Agency Placements are available to students in the Clinical Psychology program beginning in their second year of study. Supervision at all practicum sites is by psychologists who have been approved by our faculty. Available placements are diverse, ranging from child learning disability and ADHD assessments to testing and treatment of migrant workers and their children to work with incarcerated juvenile and adult offenders and chronically disturbed psychiatric inpatients. Varied racial and ethnic minorities and socioeconomic status are also represented. All of these community placements provide stipends to students for their clinical work.
Fellowships : The university provides several excellent fellowships for incoming and continuing students. These include the University and Presidential Research Fellowships, the Leslie N. Wilson Assistantship for African-American students, and the Delores Auzenne Fellowship for minority students. The Department nominates incoming students for these awards; applicants should not apply directly. Please see http://gradstudies.fsu.edu/funding.html for details about these fellowships.
African-American and Hispanic applicants are encouraged to apply
for the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program, which is for newly
enrolling African-American and Hispanic students and provides
funding for up to five years. The department typically supplements
the funding provided by the McKnight program. Information about
the program and an application may be found at: http://www.fefonline.org/mdf.html.
The application deadline is January 15th.
Minority students may wish to inquire about the Ford Foundation
Predoctoral Fellowships for Minorities (see http://www7.nationalacademies.org/fordfellowships/)
and the Minority Fellowship Programs sponsored by the American
Psychological Association, including the APA Minority Fellowship
Program in the Neurosciences (see http://www.apa.org/mfp/).
African-American students newly admitted to a doctoral program
at FSU are eligible for a Black Graduate
Student Orientation Fellowship. The program is
under the direction of the FSU Black Studies Program and is typically
held during the three weeks prior to the start of the fall semester.
The purpose of the program is to enhance the retention and academic
performance of African-American graduate students at FSU (see
http://www.fsu.edu/~aas/bgsop.htm).
Information about FSU graduate funding opportunities and financial aid may be found at http://gradstudies.fsu.edu/funding.html. The website also provides current tuition rates, though students typically receive waivers for the vast majority of tuition costs.
