Funding

A female researcher takes notes in a field of wildflowers

GRADUATE

Successful applicants are awarded either Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAs) or Graduate Research Assistantships (GRAs). New students are supported with a GTA stipend starting at $23,000 for both PhD and Master’s students, a tuition waiver, fee waiver, and health insurance. GRAs are assigned by individual faculty members who have available grant support for a particular line of research. Many of our students hold external fellowships (1 in 12 have received an NSF GRF, for example), and we strongly encourage all applicants to apply for such fellowships.

External Fellowships:

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. (Note that as of Fall 2016, you may now only apply once as a grad student.)
Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF). For students in fields of study that advance the use of high-performance computing to solve specific, complex science and engineering problems (including biological sciences).
Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowships.
UT’s Office of Research maintains lists of external science and engineering fellowships for graduate students (and post-docs).

Internal Fellowships

UT Graduate School Fellowships.

Internal Funding

TENN Herbarium Student Research Awards. Projects must be herbarium-based, either using or vouchering herbarium specimens or analyzing herbarium specimen data.
Breedlove, Dennis Awards. Awards can be used by undergraduate and graduate students applying to support botanically-based fieldwork.
EEB departmental funds available every year for current graduate students