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 $15,000 plus tuition and fees.

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

• Bernadotte Schmidt awards are granted each semester to support graduate research expenses.
• The Galen Broeker fund helps underwrite graduate-student research on British topics  
• The Charles O. Jackson Award 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 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 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 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 J. Wallace & Katie Dean Graduate Fellowship and the Herman Spivey Fellowship 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