Financial Support
SIU Carbondale offers a number of competitive graduate fellowships to full-time graduate students. Awards are made by the Graduate School on the recommendation of the English program’s Graduate Studies Committee.
Almost all MA, MFA, and PhD students hold graduate assistantships, which provide stipends for the academic year and full remission of tuition. The annual stipend, which comes with tuition remission, ranges from $13,000 to $14,500, depending on the degree. Assistantships are renewable to students in good standing: up to twenty-four months for MA students, up to thirty-two months for MFA, and forty-eight for PhD. Graduate students in good standing who have taught freshman English (ENGL 101 and 102) are also eligible to teach a variety of courses to broaden their teaching expertise, including literature courses, and to serve as tutors in the program’s Writing Center. Most graduate assistants are assigned to the University’s first year writing program, in which they have full responsibility for two sections of composition each semester. An extensive series of pre-semester workshops, a semester-long seminar in the teaching of college composition, and a mentoring system complement graduate work and assist in professional development. Summer teaching is also available to a limited number of graduate students.