Benefits of Graduate Study at Texas A&M
- A fully funded program with a competitive stipend ($20,000/year) for 5 years of study
- Varied teaching opportunities at a 1/1 teaching load (1 course per semester), with opportunities for research positions and fellowships
- Widely available summer teaching
- Yearly support for conferences and regular support for professional development and research enhancement (trips to archives, fieldwork, language training, summer institutes)
- Fellowship and scholarship opportunities
- Professionalization and placement support geared towards a range of career outcomes
Assistantships
All PhD students are offered assistantships upon admission. All appointments are budgeted at 20 hours per week and include health insurance benefits. Stipends are awarded for 9 months; summer teaching assistantships are available for PhD students.
All assistantships include a waiver of out-of-state tuition and fees. This is not a full tuition waiver and must be renewed each semester. The Graduate and Professional School covers tuition costs for doctoral students for five years.
PhD students typically teach ENGL 104: Composition and Rhetoric; ENGL 203: Writing about Literature; and ENGL 210: Business and Technical Writing (both in the classroom and online). MA students, and PhD students who have not get earned 18 hours of graduate credit, grade for large lecture classes. Advanced students or students with special qualifications occasionally teach other courses, including Creative Writing, Children’s Literature, and the British and American survey courses. Some GATs are assigned to grade for large lecture sections.
We also offer several research assistantships for PhD students, on a competitive basis including the English Department Dissertation Fellowship (a semester release from teaching to work on the dissertation).
Currently, all students are given one Summer Fellowship in either their 3rd or 4th summer, equivalent to the amount of teaching one summer session, to assist them in focusing on their dissertation for the duration of one summer.
Fellowships, Awards, and Research Grants
College and University Fellowships: Graduate Merit and Diversity Fellowships are available to entering students only. Qualified students are automatically nominated at the time of application.
Each academic year, we offer funding for all graduate students for the following.
- Travel to conferences to present papers
- Professional development funding to attend workshops, institutes, courses, etc. (usually, but not always, in the summer)
- Research enhancement funding to travel to archives, libraries, and other research locations
The Staley Creswell Teaching Award: Annual department award for outstanding teaching by a graduate student.
Distinguished Graduate Student Awards: The Graduate and Professional School (GPS) sponsors an annual university-wide award for excellence in teaching and research at both the M.A. and Ph.D. levels.
The Forrest Burt Memorial Award: Annual award (approximately $250) to a graduate student who is specializing in Victorian Literature, Modern British Literature, or Rhetoric and Composition.
The Hamlin Hill Essay Prize: Annual award (approximately $250) for the best essay in historical literary study written in a TAMU graduate seminar in English during the previous calendar year.
Dr. William Barzak Memorial Scholarship: Annual award (approximately $2000) for students specializing in sixteenth- or seventeenth-century literature or, failing candidates in the priority category, in bibliography or textual studies.