Dept. of Applied Linguistics

Graduate Admissions

Funding Opportunities

The Department of Applied Linguistics makes every effort to support graduate study and all students are encouraged to apply for grants and awards. Grants and awards come in two main categories: internal (funded by the university) and external (funded by other granting institutions).

Internal Funding

Departmental Support

Graduate Assistantships:

The department offers two kinds of graduate assistantships, both on a competitive basis:

Teaching Assistants (TA) teach two courses per semester, generally in ESL. There may also be opportunities to teach languages other than English. Excellent oral and writing skills in the teaching language are required.
Research Assistants (RA) are assigned to work 20 hours per week, either assisting a professor in a particular research capacity or working in a research center or institute.

Graduate Student Travel Funding:

Funding for travel to present papers or posters at regionally, nationally and internationally recognized academic conferences is available on a competitive basis.

College and University Support

The College of Liberal Arts and the University have several awards that recognize academic excellence and provide research support to graduate students.

For more information on college-wide funding opportunities, please click here.

For more information on university-wide student aid opportunities, please click here.

External Resources

Research and dissertation grants for graduate students are available from a variety of governmental and private organizations. Some of the national organizations that offer grants related to the broad field of Applied Linguistics are listed below. The Community of Science (COS) is the leading comprehensive funding resource and contains a database of funding opportunities world-wide. Its services are available to all PSU faculty and students.

The National Science Foundation: NSF sponsors dissertation grants and grants for young scholars.
National Endowment for the Humanities: NEH dissertation grants support work in the humanities.
Fulbright Student Program (Department of State): For U.S. citizens, this program sponsors research and teaching abroad for graduate students to over 140 countries.
IREX: IREX sponsors grants to US scholars working on issues (and languages) of Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Various pre-doctoral programs are available, both for US scholars and for scholars from Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Rotary International/The Rotary Foundation: Rotary's Ambassadorial Scholarships fund research and study projects abroad for graduate students. You must be a non-Rotarian to apply and you need to be sponsored by a regional Rotary organization.
Social Science Research Council: This organization offers many pre-dissertation grants on a wide variety of research topics in the social sciences, including the International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship funded by the Andrew Mellon foundation and International Predissertation Fellowships.
The Spencer Foundation: The Spencer Foundation awards dissertation fellowships for research on the improvement of education, including issues in language and linguistics.
American Educational Research Association: AERA funds research in educ ation. You must be a member of AERA to apply.
Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation: Sponsors the Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship (on ethics and values), the Mellon Minority University Fellows Dissertation Travel and Research Grant, and Dissertation Grants in Women's Studies.