Funding Opportunities

Financial aid is available to PhD students in the form of teaching and research assistantships. These allow students to provide support for faculty either in teaching a class or in conducting research, while receiving a stipend and tuition waiver in return. Aid is only rarely available for master’s students. When available, these opportunities go to research based Master's students. Professional MS students are not hired at TAs/RAs. Hourly graduate student staff positions are available to master’s students (both research and professional) on a semester-by-semester basis.

Stipend

Assistantships provide TWO levels of stipends:

• Level 1 - For all PhD students who are in their pre-comprehensive (proposal defense) status. Also, for all research based MS students, if they end up getting hired as a TA. 
• Level 2 - For all PhD students who are in post-comprehensive status.

Tuition Waivers

Both teaching assistants and research assistants will receive resident tuition waivers upto 15 credit hours. However, the total number of credit hours depends upon the percent of time they are appointed.

Students offered assistantships who are U.S. citizens but not residents of Colorado are urged to apply for resident status as soon as possible. Non-resident tuition waivers are not normally available to such students after their first year.

Conditions

The department follows the Grad School Graduate Student Appointment Rules, in summary:

• Holders of assistantships must be full-time students as defined by the Graduate School in terms of degree status and good standing.
• They are expected to be making adequate progress in research and academics.
• Graduate School appointment rules state that students admitted as a provisional degree student are not eligible to hold an appointment. 
• The Department does not hire students admitted as a provisional degree students and/or students under academic probation, as Teaching Assistants.
• The Department does not hire students with "Incomplete" grades, as Teaching Assistants.
• It is at the discretion of their faculty advisor to petition, if they want to hire their students who are admitted provisionally, their students under academic probation and students with Incomplete grades, as RAs. 

Such support is contingent upon satisfactory performance and the availability of funds.

Payroll, Tuition Coverage and Insurance Premium Coverage

For questions related to payroll, tuition coverage and insurance premium coverage for those on a qualifying Research and Teaching Assistantship appointments see the Q&A.

The department has instituted two types of summer research fellowships:

• Dean's Summer Research Fellowship - Dean's Summer Research Fellowship is offered with admissions for an incoming PhD student to be used during their first summer in the program. The amount is $6K for the awarded summer. 
• Departmental Summer Research Fellowship - This fellowship is offered to outstanding PhD student TAs, who have been TAing for many semesters and missing out on research opportunities. The amount is $6K for the awarded summer.

Note - Recipients of departmental summer research fellowship are not eligible to hold any other University appointments. Students with summer internships or other summer funding are not considered for the Departmental Summer Research Fellowship, because the intent of the fellowship is to support students who do not have any summer funding. 

There are several sources of financial support for travel for students presenting a technical paper at a computer science conference. These include the Computer Science Department itself, as well as programs sponsored by the Graduate School. In addition, students can volunteer for full support to attend a Usenix or IETF conference.

Computer Science Departmental Conference Support Scholarships

Each year the Department allocates money to be awarded to support graduate student presentations at technical conferences. The Graduate Committee makes the awards. In recent years most awards were $300 - $1,000, depending on the quality of the conference. 

The Committee will consider requests for conference support scholarships on a rolling basis throughout the year and will fund future events only. Once you have you paper accepted to any event(s), you need to fill out the Departmental Conference Support Scholarship Application and submit it. These awards are made as long as funds are available and aren't awarded more than once to the same student within the same academic year. Once we are done with the funds, students will be notified.