Welcome and Funding Opportunities for MSc PhD

Talking about funding, graduate funding opportunities today, and we're just going to talk a little bit, it's mostly going to be a little bit more around like the actual funding, minimum funding policy, which I'll explain in a bit. There's a little bit about Master's students, a little bit about EdD students. So some of it, if you're an EdD or a Master's student, this will be applicable, but I think that lots of this is just going to be kind of focused on around some of our minimum guaranteed funding. I just want to first of all start off by saying that we do recognize that students are increasingly under pressure when it comes to finances, that graduate school can be more and more expensive. This was a survey done by the Alliance of Student Associations for 2024, I believe, 2025, but they just noted in here when they did the survey of students around like the cost of rent going up a huge amount, living expenses, you know, cost of food. The estimated cost of living is right now like over $28,000 across Canada, so it can be different depending on where you're living, in which province. But it is, we do recognize this, we hear it a lot from students, so I don't want you to think that when we're talking about some of this funding that we're tone deaf, because it is for sure something that we hear a lot from students. How are students paying for their education? It can range, right? Some folks do need to work, some people do have some savings or parents who can help them out. The reliance on government loans has gone up by 6%, so we do see, of course, people trying to offset costs that way. At the same time, we also feel the pinch, so when it comes to government funding for us as an institution, between 24 and 27% of our operating budget comes from the provincial government. That's decreased from a decade ago or even longer, steadily has decreased. So I think I heard recently about 60% of our budget does come from tuition. That's a huge, huge shift in our operating. Since 2019, with the current provincial government we have, we've actually had a loss to our funding, so in many years we've actually been in a negative in terms of the funding amounts we've received. They did freeze our operating grant for about three or four years, which meant that we got no new funding. But because of the expenses that we incur, as you know, with things like electricity and all that stuff, that we actually were at a deficit then. We were in a negative state year over year, and we've actually lost over 500 jobs. So we're pretty slim in our budget here at the U of C. We still, I think, are managing to do some really good programming and offering good programs to students, but I think on the back end we definitely have been feeling the pinch in terms of finances, which is, I think, not uncommon. So when I look across universities, it's a common thread across Canada. So that said, the Faculty of Graduate Studies in 2026 came up with a new funding policy for students, and when we were looking at our budget and how much that was going to cost us, we actually opted out of this funding policy for master's students. So instead of students falling under this policy, we actually said that we were going to provide all master's thesis-based students, so thesis-based students, not for M.Ed. students. For M.Sc. students, we were going to just provide a $3,000 scholarship for the year, and this is going to be distributed throughout the year in $1,000 increments. So that's for two years, a student just kind of gets a flat $3,000. So that's, I guess, you know, something, and we do recognize, of course, that there's other ways in which students will have to try to kind of make up for the cost of school. So we'll talk about that in a bit, about what that would look like. There we go. So how are master's students going to take advantage of some opportunities that we have? So we really do rely a lot on scholarships and awards, and so we do recognize that there's external scholarships and awards for students. The most popular one for us in education is SSHRC, but some students do get CIHR scholarships. We have other external scholarships and awards that are dependent on different organizations and the things that they offer. We have internal scholarships and awards, so we have a workman's program-recommended awards. We have something called a graduate awards competition, and we have other program or university-competitive graduate awards. So if you have not applied for this, we encourage students to apply before they get into program, so when they apply to the program, we encourage them to do that. But if you are currently coming into program and don't have an award, I would encourage you to be aware of the scholarship competitions coming up. So pay attention to those communications that are on student listserv and make sure that you are applying to these to help you offset your income. The other main source is our research assistantships, and we call them GARs, and these can be in different forms. So you could have a GAR, sometimes a supervisor would give a or you would have like, sometimes they'll give it in the form of a scholarship. So there's different ways in which supervisors or other faculty can pay for research assistantships, but those are the most popular ways to do that. So keep your eye out for these opportunities, and it doesn't necessarily just have to be within Workland. We know some students that also do GARs outside of Workland and the faculty. Someone is asking you about decreased funding on the institution supervisor side effect intake of how many masters can be accepted into the PhD. Yeah, so we can talk about that a little bit. As you see, you'll see on some of my next slides that there is a much different policy now for funding in terms of the minimum amounts. So if you're an incoming PhD student this year, we are providing, we have to make sure that students can earn a minimum amount of funding for four years. So for PhD students, they are domestic students. It kind of breaks down this way, where you have a base funding, which they basically say is your cost of living amount, which is just under $28,000, and then your annual tuition. So you should know that you're making that much money at a minimum for your year. For international students, they do give an international tuition award of $3,000. So not only is your tuition a little bit more as an international student, but it also means that you kind of have that offset with that international tuition award. So base funding, et cetera, and tuition. The reason why I'm not giving exact amounts, as you'll see in a second here, that you actually have an increase in your base funding by 2% every year. So for this year, your annual funding for a domestic student is just around $31,000. And that's for your tuition is around $3,600 for that. So in total, that's what you're getting. And then for international students, of course, it's a little bit more that you actually get because of your tuition amount offset by your graduate tuition award. For 2027, though, with that increase of 2%, that means that your base funding will go up by $555. So every year, your amount's going to be going up. So add that $555 to your 27,750 for next year, and then another 2% on the total of that. So you can see that it actually kind of adds up quite quickly in terms of the amounts. So with this, we are basically responsible for every student that comes in. We're responsible for making sure that they earn that amount of money, which does mean that it increases the financial burden that we have. And as a faculty, any kind of money that's not provided by supervisor research guards or a student scholarship, we are responsible for the remainder of that amount. So as a faculty, we have to make sure that we can basically pay any kind of remaining costs for students. And that will affect us most likely over time in terms of how many students we can take in. So why do we have this? I think there's some nice things about it. For one thing, as a student, you know that you're going to earn that certain amount in a year, that it's guaranteed that you'll earn it. And the idea then, according to our Faculty of Graduate Studies, is that you don't have to seek external employment. So you can concentrate on your studies and get your studies. You can do that without having to work elsewhere and do other work. So this is for our doctoral thesis students, only our PhD students. Our EdD students don't fall under this funding policy, only our PhD. But the idea is with a PhD that you're on campus, you're focusing on your studies, that you can take up these opportunities for research, and then you also hopefully aren't going to be in program for more than four or five years. So there's some positives to that. So what are some sources of funding for you? We have, again, internal and external scholarships and awards. If you have an award that's less than $3,000, we actually don't count that towards your minimum funding. So you would get like your minimum funding plus your $3,000. So if you got a scholarship worth $5,000, that's taking off your $30,000. $15,000 taken off. We really want to get a SSHRC because that's like $40,000 for PhD, and that's a nice chunk of change. It's actually more than your minimum. So that would be a good incentive for you to apply for those. Again, you can do research assistantships. At the PhD level, we have a lot more GATs or teaching assistantships. As a master's student, you really can't be doing a GAT for more other PhD students or master's students. So for PhD students, there's opportunities then to do a GAT for a master's course. So undergrad courses do have GATs, but for master's students, there's not as many. If you're a PhD student, you can also be a sessional instructor. So according to the collective agreement with our graduate students, that you can have up to two sessional appointments that go towards your minimum funding. Any other sessional postings after that is just extra cash for you. Paid residencies are included in this, and that's mostly for PhD and psych students because you do have a pre-doctoral internship. So if you're doing that within your fourth year, then that paid residency is part of your funding. But we also have a lot of other paid internships that come through our Faculty of Graduate Studies. So if you have one of those that's 12 hours a week or more, that counts towards your minimum funding. Anything less does not. To be eligible for our funding policy, you do have to be registered full-time and be active in program. We do say that you have to maintain residence here at least for the first two years of program, but it's really expected that you're here for four. You are expected to be available during the day to attend research seminars, your courses, any kind of GARs or GATs and research related to duties at the University of Campus. So if you are not here on campus, you're not eligible for this funding. And if you're doing any kind of professional work outside of campus, again, you're not eligible for this funding. You don't fall under this policy. You must make adequate progress and have a satisfactory rating on your annual progress report, which happens every year. If you are going to, you have to apply for any GATs and GAR opportunities if you don't have other sources of funding. And those we apply through a program called Elevate. So those postings will pop up and you can see them and apply for them if you're eligible for them. Again, you're expected to apply for any scholarships and awards for which you're eligible for each year that you're eligible. And again, Erika put that nice link in the chat for us. We do actually check. So we check to see if folks who are eligible have applied for these scholarships and awards. And if you have not, we will actually call back funding. So please be warned of that. Again, you can't be self-funded and you can't be working a lot externally. If you're going to be working at Starbucks for five hours a week, that's something different. But say you're doing extensive work, substitute teaching or something like that, then we would be tapping you on the shoulder. So here's an example of how it would work in terms of your funding. So say Joan, who's a domestic PhD student, is receiving a $10,000 a year stipend from your supervisor, has a scholarship, has a GATT in winter term. We would consider you then to have met the minimum funding and you're good to go. You don't receive any money from us in terms of workland funds. Jack has received a STRICT grant of $40,000. He now meets our minimum funding requirement. He also has signed up to be a GATT in winter term for $6,500. That GATT does not count towards the minimum funding. It's just extra to the STRICT grant money. Any shortfall of earnings does come from our workland school funding. So for example, say you have a $10,000 stipend from your supervisor, you get a $15,000 scholarship, that's $25,000 total. We would then have to make sure that any kind of remaining funds is distributed from our workland funds. How are you getting this money? If you are a September start, we're going to ensure that you guarantee that you get $10,000 by the end of February, with another $26,500 by end of June, and then the remainder by the end of August. So if you're that start, that's kind of how it rolls. So if you are a July start, then it's a little bit different. You kind of have to adjust for the extra two months early. It's kind of the same idea. We make sure that you would know that you would have earned $10,000 by December, for example. So here's an example, again, a domestic PhD. So Jane, who has an ages scholarship, she's got this lump sum payment in September. So ages, they pay out one amount in September. Now we know that Jane has received the funds that she needs up to the end of February. So we're not worrying about Jane. But we might, at the end of February, in February, do an assessment and find out that Jane has done a half GAT in winter, or signed up for one, and did some GAR and got some GAR funding in the fall. This is a total of $18,000. So the total earnings as of February would be $19,000. That means that any shortfall of the $26,500 would come out of the funds to the end of June. So we'll make sure that that $26,500 is met. And then, of course, we would do another evaluation to check to see if there's any other kind of sources of income and make sure that Jane has the amount that she needs till the end of August. Here's another example of an international PhD. So for Rahat, he's actually getting a stipend from a supervisor of $25K for the year. So this is going to be evenly divided over the 12 months. And then if Rahat gets a GAT of $3,000, and you get even payments from January to April, that means that any differences in funds would be paid out in July and August. And again, here's Haley, who's got a PhD CERC scholarship of $40K, evenly distributed across the 12 months, getting a scholarship top of $1,500. If you get one of these large scholarships, you get a top up. She's met the guaranteed funding amount. Doesn't mean that she can't take on other opportunities. I often get this question, but you can still seek out other earning opportunities. It's just that we would consider you to us to have met the minimum guaranteed funding, and we're not tracking by anything after that. So applying for funding opportunities, if you're interested in being a processional instructor, we have these posted on our career stage. We also, of course, have our GATs or GARs posted in our Elevate. If you are a student who will be applying for these opportunities, I really encourage you to review the GSA Collective Agreement, because it has information in there about what your rights are, what you can expect for payment, etc., etc. So please encourage you to take a look at that so that you don't get caught unawares and you know what your rights are. Please be aware, again, of the scholarship and award opportunities. The awards that we have on our website are kind of the major awards, but there is actually a Graduate Awards Database. This is updated by the Faculty of Graduate Studies. They provide the terms of reference for awards, and it's a much larger database. It kind of has all of the awards across campus, and actually external awards as well. So you can go onto the Faculty of Graduate Studies website. Thank you, Erica. And you can do a search, and you may be eligible for awards that we don't have listed on our site, just because of maybe your background. So for example, they may have one that's kind of, maybe you have something related to engineering. You have an engineering background. You might be related to that. There's like entrepreneurial awards. There's other things in there that we can't always track and list on our site. So, you know, always feel free to kind of poke around in there and see what you find. So you might be asking, why would I do all that work to get a scholarship when other students don't get scholarships? Well, again, if you have smaller scholarships, it doesn't count towards any more funding. For larger scholarships, you do get a top up from us. So there's a bonus there. Again, if you're eligible to apply, you have to apply. Otherwise, you could see some reduced funding from us. And it really looks good if you get larger scholarships that meet the minimum guaranteed amount. It kind of helps in terms of being able to keep, you know, our numbers up for students and doctoral students. I also say too, like small scholarships kind of add up. And they are like, makes you kind of more competitive for larger scholarships. So when people are reviewing your SSHRC applications and they say, look, this person's got like, you know, $1,000 here, like, you know, $5,000 here, that counts. It gives you points when you're being evaluated for the SSHRC competition. So just want to kind of, Gail, any of you, if you're, you know, EdD, MEd, MSc, PhD, just in terms of the types of awards that we do have out there, it's good for you to kind of keep these in mind. I've talked about external already, but we do have, again, that graduate award competition. That's for any kind of thesis based student. We have indigenous awards. So if you're an indigenous student, no matter what program you're in, take a look at that competition. It's one application, similar to the graduate award competition, and it just allows you to apply for all of them. So make sure that you put your name in that hat. Our ages, there's different types of ages and they are awards that you don't have to apply for directly. If you have applied for a SSHRC, if you've applied for the graduate award competition or the indigenous graduate award competition, you're automatically in the running for these ages. So just so you know, they're there, students are eligible for them, but you don't necessarily have to apply. And then lastly, of course, our internal awards. So if you are an EdD student, an MEd student, you're not eligible for a graduate award competition, there are some awards in this pool for students in those programs. They will specify with the terms of reference which ones you're eligible for. So you just have to look through the terms of reference and to see, and you know, I encourage you to apply to those as well. And of course, other students can apply. The other thing I just want to make note of is our travel awards. These aren't part of our minimum funding, but we do have a pool of money for travel if you're planning to go to a conference. In order to be eligible for these, you do have to have been accepted for the conference, but we do have two cycles of these awards, one in the fall and one in the spring, or by winter, I would say. But you know, if you are one of those students who's looking for some funding for travel, I encourage you to apply for those. This is just kind of a little diagram that I have for, so students can kind of see what they are eligible for. So I often kind of get this question, like, can I apply for Tri-Agency awards? This kind of just helps. But if you'd like to know more about awards and scholarships, we do have a recorded recording of an information session in the Student D2L that explains in detail scholarships and awards. Erica, I believe, will be hosting some sessions as well. Do you have dates for those yet? We don't have anything scheduled yet. I think we'll be holding a session in the summer when a lot of folks are coming to campus, and then we'll likely do another one online in the fall to do an overview of all the awards for the upcoming year. Thank you. If you are a PhD student, I will warn you that the SSHRC competition comes up really fast, and I'm not sure exactly what they're going to be doing for that yet, but last year they had a preliminary assessment form to fill out. That was over the summer. So I would encourage you to connect with your supervisor actually now, before you start the program. Check in with them about applying for SSHRC. Even if you don't have a set idea of what you want to do, it's okay. You don't have to do what you've applied for. You just have to have a good proposal that makes sense, that people can see would be a fundable thing and a feasible thing for you to do. So often people will use a variation of their honours degree, or something similar to what they did in their masters, and then they'll just make sure that they get that application in. It's usually early, so October 1st I believe has been the traditional due date, but there will be notices sent out this year about what that due date looks like, but it's really hard to come in in September and getting yourself oriented to a new program and then all of a sudden thinking about this tri-agency application. And if you've missed the preliminary assessment form in the summer, then you're really hooped because they invite people to apply a full application. So check in with your supervisor, make sure you're looking at the notices. If they do ask you to do that preliminary assessment form and you're incoming to the program, just make sure you're your eye out for that and that you're applying over the summer so that you are catching that wave of applications. Then otherwise you get into fall and you have to wait for the next year to be able to apply. Oh, I was ahead of myself here. Masters are December, so you do have a little bit of time, but I also will, as a supervisor, encourage folks to connect with me over the summer. If you're not doing too much over the summer, start thinking about it then, and then you're not trying to deal with your first term and do a proposal at the same time. It can be overwhelming. The same proposal and references can be used for the GAC competition, which is deadlines in December. Again, attend those fellowship workshops, listen to the recorded version, and then pay attention to those notices. Okay, if you have any concerns about tuition and fees, there's lots of resources for you in terms of our calendar, so make sure you're not kind of caught unawares about what those look like. If you need to have a payment plan, this is possible. You just have to do it before the term starts. So before your fees are due, you have to make sure you set up a payment plan. They will not accept it if you're in arrears. Make sure you're really aware of what it costs to live in Calgary. So here's some resources for you. Help yourself build a budget. If you're an international student and you're thinking that you're going to bring your family here, the amount that you're getting for minimum funding is probably not going to be enough to support your family. So really think carefully about what you can afford in terms of living costs if you're planning on doing that. There's things that you should probably be aware of. For example, food is much more expensive here. We are a country where we import a lot of our fruits and vegetables for most of the year, and so you're looking at kind of a lot of it more expense when it comes to like, you know, the cost of an apple or an orange compared to maybe other places where you have lived. And of course, we are, you know, thinking gas prices these days, lots of things that are probably going to make food costs increase if we don't sort out our Strait of Hormuz issue, which is not our issue, someone else's issue, but it's become our issue. There's some resources here around income tax and how to support students around that. And if you're an international student and you have questions about things like visas, there's our International Student Services office. We do not provide advice about things like visas, et cetera, and like, you know, the rules around work and things like that. Okay, and lastly, of course, if you're having problems being paid, you need to contact our wonderful HR desk. Again, I'm just going to put these collective agreements here as links in the slides for your easy reference. Okay, that was the cold notes of our funding. I just want to kind of check in to see if there's any questions that people have about that. I had a quick question just for the MSC program funding. Did that alter like $6,000, like $3,000 and $3,000, just to be clear? It would be $3,000 a year, so for two years. Okay, thank you so much. Thanks for being brave and asking the question. So the maximum amount for travel, I think that's the question that Lena has about the maximum amount for conferences. It really varies year to year. So we have a pool of money that we divide over the fall and winter, and we try to make sure that everybody gets some if they're eligible. So any amount that's intensive, we have like 30 students that are in the pool, and it's going to be less money. So we have in the past ranged from $200 to $500 to $1,000, and it has ranged depending on where you're going and whether you're the first author or if you're doing a solo presentation, are you doing a paper versus a symposium? So it will vary. I can't really guarantee like any kind of amount at this point. Shake is asking, as a PhD international, will you get a salary every month? So you're not going to get, I would say don't expect to get the same amount every month. It can really vary month to month depending on the other sources of income you have. So I think you're maybe a little bit late coming to the session, Shake, but hopefully you can listen to the recording later. But I was talking about like how students kind of get, like sometimes they'll get an ages scholarship, and that's like a lump sum that they get in September. So if you're getting that ages, you wouldn't get anything else in terms of a salary until we reevaluate in February to see if you need extra funds from us. If you have a supervisor stipend, let's say you're getting a $15,000 stipend from a supervisor, that would be divided over 12 months. So you would get that amount. I guess it's kind of like the salary. But what we try to do is guarantee the students that they're going to get a certain amount by a certain time of the year. And that could look different every month depending on the sources of income. Ah, this is a good question. So someone's asking here, O'Daniel is asking about how many courses do you take during a term to be considered a full-time student? So as a PhD student, as a thesis-based student, you're actually considered full-time all the time. So it's not contingent on the number of courses you take. However, if you're a course-based student, like an M.Ed. student, you actually have to take at least one course, two courses in fall and winter, and one course over spring and summer. So as an M.Ed. student, your status may fluctuate depending on the time of year. So after two-year residency, we actually really would expect that you'd be on campus for four years. But we recognize that some students are doing things like the pre-doctoral internship. So even though we say a two-year residency minimum, the status of you as a PhD student wouldn't change. You would still be considered a full-time student if you're registered as a thesis-based student. You will be asked, I don't know if someone else at the GPA can answer the third question, it says you can enroll in courses without payment. So when I think you have to pay, you have to pay by the, I think there's a tuition deadline to pay for fall. Does anybody want to answer that question? Hey, Neto, yeah, Sylvia. It's a good question. I know there is the best resource to find out when you pay your tuition is the academic calendar. So if you look at any of the websites at the University of Calgary, for example, Faculty Graduate Studies are our website. If you do the drop down at the top, you'll find the academic calendar link. That calendar is going to tell you by each session what the deadline date is for payment of your tuition. So you can certainly do your registration, but you have a payment deadline. It varies by term. And if you need more detail on that, certainly send me an email because I'm your GPA and happy to help you out. Yeah, I'm available if you need help. And Erica's put that link in there. Thank you, Erica. Thanks, Tom. These are some good questions. If you have questions, follow up questions about funding, you can contact our funding coordinator, who's Tom. Do you want to put that email in there, the funding email, Tom? We have like a funding email that you're welcome to email and either Tom or I will answer those questions. So sometimes there's questions that come up after people have left and they're in the midst of their work. Yeah, so there's our funding email. Scholarships and awards. Again, you can connect with Erica through that or you can connect with your GPA who can forward on the questions. Again, really encourage you to watch those recorded recordings of the scholarships, though. Thank you. Yeah, let me see if I can get the tax information in there. All right. So there's different income tax implications. So if you're on a scholarship, a scholarship actually isn't taxable. If you're on a GAR, just be aware that that is a taxable thing. So that will be part of the amount that kind of comes off your pay. Will you have before you start paying attention? Not likely, Lina. So unless you have some sort of scholarship coming in that you're like in ages or something like that, that you get paid off like a lump sum in the September, you won't be having funding from us before you start paying tuition. So you will have to be plentiful for that. I would like to mention something to the student about tuition and fees. I just sent a screenshot in the chat for all the thesis-based students, MSc, PhD. You are paying exactly the same program fee no matter how many courses you are taking because you are considered full-time while you're in the program. For MSc students, two years or a little bit more than two years if you defend after two years. So you are paying exactly the same. I put that there. So students wondering about courses and cost fees, you don't need to worry about that. You are paying exactly the same per term. Yeah, thanks for providing that clarification, Tom. I think MEd students are paying per course, so that would be a little bit different for you. All right, if there's no other questions, I'll let you go. Thank you very much for coming tonight. I hope you found this useful and thanks to the GPE group and our GPD folks for attending today. Really appreciate it. It's nice, of course, to see your faces and I hope everyone has a good night.