Financial Support
The Department of Classical Studies supports for five years all students to whom we have offered admission and who are making satisfactory progress toward the Ph.D. Students beyond the fifth year are not guaranteed additional support, but are often successful in competing for teaching or other awards, including the departmental Competitive Teaching Fellowship, competitive graduate school fellowships, and a range of internal and external funding opportunities.
Students will be paid from the Department's instructional budget at the rate current during the terms when they are teaching. Although we strongly encourage all Ph.D. students to complete the dissertation in a timely fashion, some may not be able to finish by the end of the fifth year of graduate study; therefore, it is important to be aware of and pursue other sources of support for the further period required.
Other sources of funding within the Department include:
1) research assistantships, often connected with individual professor's grants;
2) summer teaching in the Department: Intensive Beginning Greek and Latin are regularly offered and are entrusted to advanced graduate students, and certain Classical Studies courses may be as well.
Possible sources of funding outside the Department have included:
- teaching in the University Writing Course, Duke’s freshman writing program;
- tutoring area high school students or Duke undergraduates in Latin;
- competitive fellowships available to the American School in Athens and the American Academy in Rome;
- competitive fellowships, particularly for dissertation research and writing, offered by Duke and by a number of institutions and foundations.
Smaller sums of money may be made available by the Graduate School and the Department to aid students attending and participating in conferences and meetings of professional associations.
The Director of Graduate Studies, will share information about available resources within and outside the Department, and the Graduate School provides a wealth of information on funding opportunities.