We have several funding opportunities for incoming and returning students, including the Provost Fellowship and Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTA). Many students secure funding through other units on campus, and many of our second year students are awarded GTA positions in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric.
Provost Fellowships
All admitted applicants are considered. The MFA faculty nominate our top two students from our incoming admissions for the Provost Fellowships. Each fellowship comes with a $10,000 stipend per academic year, full tuition waivers for two years for fall, spring, and summer semesters, and health insurance. Students are responsible for fees.
The College of Graduate Studies makes the final decisions on which students are offered the fellowships. Provost Fellows must maintain a full-time course load of nine hours per semester and may take summer courses if offered.
There are several other fellowships offered through the UCF College of Graduate Studies.
Graduate Teaching Assistantships
There is no separate application for a GTA position. Assistantships are given on an academic-year basis; they are generally not available beginning in spring semesters. We offer three to five Graduate Teaching Assistantships, which are competitive and generally offered only to our most qualified applicants to each incoming cohort.
GTA support is offered in exchange for the student’s intellectual labor. An assistantship is a job, and it waives all tuition costs (but not fees), provides $10,000 per nine-month academic year as a stipend, and health insurance. First-year assistantships in the English Department usually involve helping a professor to grade in larger undergraduate classes. First-year assistants typically do not teach their own courses.
A student who fulfills all of their assignments well in their first year will generally receive a second-year assistantship. In their second year, each GTA typically teaches two sections of the introductory multi-genre creative writing course. The program provides mentoring and support throughout the year of teaching.
A student on assistantship must maintain a full-time course load of nine hours per semester.
Assistantships should not be confused with financial aid, which is a different concern covered by Office of Student Financial Assistance.
Graduate Assistant
Many of our students secure Graduate Assistant positions in other departments or programs around campus. Once a student is admitted to the program and accepts our offer of admission, the College of Graduate Studies sends emails about other GA positions on campus. A GA position includes a stipend or salary, full tuition waiver, and health insurance.
In addition to receiving such notifications from the College of Graduate Studies, the MFA office notifies students of any GA positions that are received.
First-year and second-year students are eligible to apply to any of these positions that become available.
Second-Year GTA Position in Composition
SACS accreditation rules prevent graduate assistants from working as teachers of record until they have accrued 18 hours in their graduate programs.
Many of our second-year students teach composition as a GTA in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric and receive full-tuition waiver (student pays fees), $10K stipend for the academic year, and health insurance. In order to be eligible to be considered, students must take ENC 5705 (Theory and Practice in Composition), offered each spring semester, which counts toward the requisite 18 hours.
The opportunity to teach one’s own class is an extremely important part of graduate school. Likewise, experience in teaching composition makes a student more qualified to apply to doctoral programs and to teach in the Florida state college system.
Ted Greenberg Memorial Scholarship
The Ted Greenberg Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing presents a $1000 award to a newly admitted Creative Writing MFA graduate student who has strong qualifications for success in the graduate program. The applicant must be a member of at least one of the following communities.
- First-generation graduate student
- Non-native English speaker
- Nontraditional college age student
- A member of a community currently underrepresented among published writers in the United States
Recipients will be selected by the Creative Writing MFA faculty and/or the Department Awards Committee.