Financial Support

Students entering the University of Tennessee Graduate Program in History have a variety of sources available to them for financial support within the Department and University and from outside fellowships and grants.

The Department of History annually gives out twenty graduate teaching-assistant awards with a stipend of approximately $10,000 a year and a fee waiver. Students holding these awards are normally working toward the Ph.D. or M.A., and serve as teaching assistants for our large undergraduate survey courses. Typically, these awards are for two years, with the possibility of renewal for a third.

The Milton M. Klein Graduate Fellowship in American History is a non-service fellowship that carries a stipend of $16,000 plus tuition and fees.

One particularly worthy Ph.D. student receives the Charles W. Johnson Distinguished Teaching Assistantship each year. This assistantship is similar to those just described, but pays $12,000 annually.

The department also distributes certain other awards which can be held in conjunction with the foregoing assistantships.

• Approximately $2,000 in Bernadotte Schmidt awards is granted each semester to support graduate research expenses.
• The Galen Broeker fund helps underwrite graduate-student research on British topics (awards as high as $6000 have been made recently).
• The Charles O. Jackson Award of $750 is given to a student working on a dissertation, normally in American social and cultural history.
• The Lee L. Verstandig Award goes to a student in at least the second year of the program working on 19th-Century American or Russian History.
• The Susan Becker Graduate Teaching Award ($500) each year recognizes an outstanding teaching assistant.
• The Department of History Center for the Study of War and Society annually gives the Jerry and Edgar Wilson Fellowship ($1,000) to a graduate student working US Military History, with preference given to World War II topics.
• The Stevenson/Stephenson Award supports dissertation research on Tennessee history .
• The Charles Johnson Scholarship is reserved for an outstanding incoming graduate student.
• The Paul Bergeron Scholarship is awarded to an outstanding graduate student in American history.

History graduate students also are considered for awards made by the Graduate School at the University of Tennessee. The Hilton Smith Fellowship ($5,000 plus a fee waiver) and the Herman Spivey Fellowship ($5,000 plus a fee waiver) are given annually to particularly deserving students. McClure Grants help defray the costs of research travel.

As indicated in the Graduate Student Profiles, our students have had great success in obtaining these university-wide fellowships and grants and great success in securing outside fellowships, such as the Guggenheim Fellowship.

All department awards are made in early March for the following academic year and are based on merit.

Contact Information

Catherine Higgs
Associate Professor & Director, Graduate Program
915 Volunteer Blvd.
6th Floor Dunford Hall
Knoxville, TN 37996-4065

Office: (865) 974-7095
Fax: (865) 974-3915
E-mail: chiggs@utk.edu