Funding and Financial Support

The School offers graduate research assistantships (GRAs) for all accepted full-time PhD students. The GRA is a work package that pairs a student with a SSW faculty member to support their research. Full-time students are eligible for full-time (20-hour) assistantships which provide a stipend of $26,750 (10-month) or $32,105 (12-month), plus tuition remission for the fall and spring semesters, and health insurance. All full-time students who are making adequate progress toward their degree are eligible for a GRA through graduation.

GRAs are offered to full-time students only. Part-time students are offered awards that cover tuition remission; they do not receive a stipend or health insurance because they are not completing a GRA.

Yes. We are able to provide GRA work packages and funding until graduation for any student making adequate progress toward their degree.

As a GRA, you will be assigned to work with a faculty member to support their research. Tasks will vary depending on the project but may include conducting literature reviews, developing data collection tools, interviewing participants or completing focus groups, cleaning and analyzing data, writing up reports and manuscripts, and attending meetings with stakeholders. As a GRA, you are expected to work 20 hours/week. Your schedule and work location will vary depending on the project needs.

A GRA is an opportunity to apply the concepts you are learning in your courses to an actual research project. You will learn first-hand the stages of a research project and what tasks are required at each stage. Your faculty mentor is also a resource for you to ask questions about a concept presented in a course and how it applies to your GRA project. Your faculty mentor can also advise you on the development of your research goals and your career path.

Although not guaranteed, your GRA assignment is often substantively related to your own research interests. At other times, your GRA assignment may be a methodological match but be focused on a research topic different than your focus.

We support professional development opportunities for students by offering a number of travel fellowships that off-set the costs of conference registration and travel. Priority is given to students who are presenting a paper or poster.

PhD Candidates can apply for one of several internal dissertation grants that can be used to cover costs related to participant incentives, transcription, statistical software, training, and external consultation. We also encourage and support students to identify and pursue opportunities for external funding.

All full-time students are required to have health insurance. An excellent insurance policy that provides wide coverage, including obstetrical care, is available through the university. For detailed information about health insurance, please visit www.umaryland.edu/health Full-time students with a GRA receive student health insurance as part of the GRA package.

The Donna Harrington Fellowship Award recognizes the outstanding leadership and mentorship of Donna Harrington. This award supports the development of additional excellence among UMSSW PhD students.

This fellowship was designed to honor Dr. Harrington’s commitment to social work scholarship. This award will benefit future generations of UMSSW PhD students while keeping alive Donna Harrington’s name and extraordinary accomplishments. 

Application Due: April 1
Amount: Up to $2,000
Who is Eligible: Current UMSSW PhD students (Pre-candidacy)

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News. 

The Jeongseok Kong & Sunmi Jin Memorial PhD Endowment award was created to enhance the research skills and opportunities for PhD students. These grants help cover travel to educational conferences, books and software, or other education-related expenditures. Preference will be given to students who are on F-1 student visas.

Application Due: April 1
Amount: Up to $2,000
Who is Eligible: PhD student at the UMSSW. Preference to F-1 Good academic standing according to UMB Graduate School policy

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News

About Joeng Kong and Sunmi Jin

Jeong Kong entered the UMSSW PhD program in the fall of 2012. He had completed his second year of courses and was taking comprehensive exams in the summer of 2014. That summer, while traveling in New York to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, Jeong and his wife Sunmi died in a tragic car accident. In their lives they modeled many strengths, including courage, commitment, balance, and love. Jeong and Sunmi demonstrated courage in moving to the U.S. to live and study in a new country. Doctoral-level study is challenging for anyone, but international students such as Jeong face the additional hurdle of performing at a high level in a new language while learning how to navigate a different culture. Finally, Jeong demonstrated great commitment to his research in cyberbullying among U.S. and Korean youth. 

This memorial endowment was designed to showcase Jeong and Sunmi's commitment to social work scholarship. The award will benefit future generations of UMSSW PhD students, while keeping alive Jeong’s and Sunmi’s names and the ideals by which they lived.

Established by Dr. Kelly Hyde, PhD class of 2002, the Susan J. Zuravin PhD Scholarship is awarded each spring to a promising PhD student. Dr. Zuravin.Susan Zuravin is a retired Professor from the School of Social Work. She mentored numerous PhD graduates including Diane DePanfilis, Professor at Hunter College; J. Curtis McMillen, Professor at the University of Chicago; Joy Ernst, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Wayne State University; and Denise Pintello, Chief of the Child and Adolescent Research Program, National Institute of Mental Health; to name a few.  

Professor Zuravin taught the two-semester research methods course in the PhD program and was well known for her clear, focused teaching and for guiding students to select the best matched and highest quality research design to answer their research questions. Having worked in the field of child welfare for over twenty years, she brought real world experience to the classroom, and led research teams (many including PhD students) to answer questions about teen parenting, as well as the ecology and the recurrence of child maltreatment. Nationally, she was recognized for her contributions to child maltreatment related research with the Research Career Achievement Award of 1998 by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. Her use of survival analysis, now a commonly used analysis method in social work, was one of the first in all of social work

Application Due: April 1
Amount: $3,000 ($1,500 per semester Fall and Spring)
Who is Eligible: Any PhD student with interest in child welfare research and evaluation

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News. 

Established by Dr. Richard P. Barth, PhD, Professor and Chair, Executive Committee of the Grand Challenges for Social Work, the Grand Challenges for Social Work award recognizes a promising PhD student with interests in advancing one of these Grand Challenges in their work.
The Grand Challenges for Social Work was developed by the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare (AASWSW). The Grand Challenges seeks to champion social progress powered by science. Social work researchers are called to:

• Harness social work’s science and knowledge base;
• Collaborate with individuals, community-based organizations, and professionals from all fields and disciplines; and
• Work together to tackle some of our toughest social problems. Together, the Grand Challenges for Social Work define a far-reaching social agenda, promoting:
  • Individual and family well-being,
  • A stronger social fabric, and
  • A just society that fights exclusion and marginalization, creates a sense of belonging, promotes trust, and offers pathways for social and economic progress. Each of the 13 Grand Challenges is associated with a network of researchers working to advance domains within these goals. Learn more at: https://grandchallengesforsocialwork.org/ 

This award is designed to support a PhD student to further develop and advance their interest in one of these Grand Challenges. (One or more new Grand Challenges may also emerge from the current initiative to Go Grander, https://grandchallengesforsocialwork.org/go-grander/ 
The awardee will have the opportunity to connect with a Network Lead within the selected Grand Challenge domain and begin to build a professional network with other researchers working to advance this goal.

Application Due: April 1
Amount: $2,000 ($1,000 per semester Fall and Spring)
Who is Eligible: Any PhD student with interest in one of the Grand Challenges
https://grandchallengesforsocialwork.org/ 

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News.

The Nikki R. Wooten Dissertation Award for Research with Military, Veterans, and Vulnerable Populations The Nikki R. Wooten Dissertation Award for Research with Military, Veterans, and Vulnerable Populations (hereafter Wooten Dissertation Award) will provide a $1,000 dissertation research award to doctoral candidates who are conducting dissertation research with military, veterans, or vulnerable populations and their families. Research with military and veteran populations will be given preference. Proposed research can utilize any research methodology (quantitative, qualitative, mixed, program evaluation) using primary or secondary data.

 Application Due: June 1
Amount: Up to $1,000
Who is Eligible: PhD Candidate with research focus on military or vulnerable populations research focus

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News. 

We are able to offer a limited number of internal grant awards from the University of Maryland Social Work PhD Program.

Application Due: June June 1 or October 1 
Amount: Up to $4,000 
Who is Eligible: PhD Candidate  

Current students can find more guidance about applying on Blackboard/PhD Student News. 

Nomination Form

The Donna Harrington Exemplary Faculty Mentor Award is designed to honor Donna’s legacy as an outstanding mentor to PhD students and to recognize a faculty member each year who follows in her footsteps by providing exceptional support and guidance to a PhD student.  

Donna Harrington was a faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Social Work from 1995-2018. From 2007 until her too early passing in 2018, she served as the PhD Program Director and held the title of Associate Dean for Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Education.  

Donna was an incredible methodologist, researcher, and mentor, who displayed compassion, and curiosity, and was intentionally collaborative in her work. Her advice and expertise were often sought by the newest of students to the most accomplished social scientists.   

Nominations from PhD alumni and current PhD students will be solicited each spring. Nominees must be current SSW faculty and (Associate or Regular) members of the UMB Graduate Faculty. The selected faculty recipient will be announced at SSW Convocation each spring. 

Nomination Form