Graduate Student Fellowships

A fellowship is an award to assist a graduate student in the pursuit of his/her studies or research, usually with no requirement for service or performance, and is classified at the university as a Non-Working Fellowship. A student on a fellowship is typically expected to focus on their training, research and/or study.

Fellowship awards are sometimes made to individual applicants and awarded through a host institution. Others are fellowship opportunities at the institutional level led by a lead faculty Principal Investigator (PI). These awards are generally funded in response to proposals which are routed through, and endorsed by, the Office of Pre-Award Services (OPAS), and are processed with a faculty sponsor/advisor listed as PI on internal approval documents. Each sponsor’s guidelines and any terms and conditions must be reviewed for UMass acceptability.

Fellowships differ from traineeships which are typically paid out to cohorts of students from federally-funded multi-year grants awarded to faculty PI’s (e.g., NSF IGERT, NSF NRT or NIH T32). With the exception of the NIH F31, traineeships are not handled like prestigious external fellowships. For information on how to process appointments for students funded by NSF or NIH Training grants, please consult the Graduate School. Fellowships are also distinct from working assistantships (TA/TO, RA, etc.), in which the student is an employee of the university and has assigned duties to perform in that employment.

Support of the fellow is provided as a stipend. Because a fellowship is not an employee/employer relationship, GEO benefits are not usually applicable. For exceptions, please see Prestigious External Fellowships and Traineeships. In addition to a stipend, there are often funds for some or all cost of education expenses in accordance with sponsor’s published guidelines. Cost of education expenses include the following:

• Tuition (tuition credit for non-working fellows is not automatic and will be given only when the fellowship terms do not include provisions to pay the tuition - refer to the Tuition Credit webpage for more information)
• Service Fee
• Graduate Senate Fee
• Student Health Fee
• Supplemental Student Health Fee (if applicable)
• Other expenses (depending on the sponsor’s guidelines, other expenses such as travel, supplies, and computer purchase are sometimes allowable)
• Indirect cost is not normally allowable

Current Fees can be found at the Office of the Bursar. See also sponsor-specific resources and NIH F31 Pre-Doctoral Fellowships.

If a fellowship application is awarded, the award is reviewed, negotiated if necessary, and processed by the Office of Post-Award Management (OPAM). Accounts are set up in the Controller’s Office under the faculty sponsor/advisor’s name. Management/supervision of expenditures on the account are the responsibility of the faculty sponsor/advisor.