As I mentioned, a lot has happened these last few days.
1. Monday at lunchtime, I met with the chair of the Ph.D. program I’m starting this fall to go over the program, opportunities, expectations, etc. I found out the program is relatively new (less than 5 years old, certainly) and currently has a mass of about 20 students. They’re trying to expand that and hope to enroll up to 10 new students (me being one of that group) this fall. We’ll all be taking the same basic core classes, and Dr. Stewart told me which classes to plan on — including their meeting dates & times, assigned instructors, and that two of the syllabi are already available online from previous semesters. (HOW cool is that?!?!)
She also mentioned that assistantships — research, graduate, and teaching — are available, 20 hours a week in exchange for a stiped of about $1100-1400, depending on your rank and experience. She encouraged me to apply for one of those, but I mentioned I didn’t think that would be feasible for my first year (as I have no intention/inclination of quitting my awesome job at TWU) and that I would reconsider in my second year. (“I think that’s very prudent,” she said.) She did mention, given my career goals (namely, teaching), that I could be paired up with a professor to do a less-formal/less-rigid “apprenticeship” so I could still get some exposure to teaching, etc., and that sounds groovy to me.
She mentioned they expect most people to complete the program within about 3 1/2 years … way faster than I’d imagined with my conservative (I thought) estimate of four years. Apparently, though, they may be able to transfer up to 18 hours of elective credit from my journalism master’s and/or MLS degrees. Awesome!
Finally, she said they have a small number of academic scholarships for Ph.D. students that provide full tuition and fees. Even though those often are given to assistants, she said in some situations they would consider awarding one to a student who was not an assistant but who still had the credentials (“which you have,” she said) to merit the scholarship. She encouraged me to let her know quickly if I was interested. (Which I did, within the 24 hours that followed. 🙂 Would that not be awesome?!
Anyway, in short the meeting was extremely helpful, extremely exciting, and extremely promising. Go to school for free? Apprentice teach with a faculty member? Become an assistant in my second year? One of only 20-30 students? Finishing in less than four years? I think these things all sound marvelous!!
Hooray for UTD, my new favorite school. 🙂