Up to $15k available to fall matriculants
Incoming applicants pursuing a doctorate in nursing at USC will have more financial aid opportunities. Three new scholarship and fellowship awards have been added for incoming students beginning next semester.
“There are other scholarships available through the college for graduate students, but there are three new ones,” program director DeAnne Hilfinger Messias said.
The new awards include the Dean’s Doctoral Fellowship Award, the Dean’s Ph.D. Scholarship Award and the Nursing Faculty Doctoral Fellowship Award. These awards aim to bring in between 10 and 15 candidates each year, according to Messias.
The Dean’s Doctoral Fellowship will be awarded to students for the first two years of the three-to-four-year program. The merit-based award, worth up to $15,000, covers tuition, fees and a stipend. Only full-time students will be eligible.
“It is expected that during their first year, these students must develop and submit an application for an outside, externally funded fellowship,” Messias said. “We have funding for between one to three students to receive it.”
The Dean’s Ph.D. Scholarship provides similar funding but is also available to part-time students.
The Nursing Faculty Doctoral Fellowship is more specific and will require students to work directly with funded faculty research mentor. This award will be given to full-time nursing doctoral students.
“This fellowship is for full-time Ph.D. students who are interested in working in the areas of health disparities and the health system,” Messias said.
Winners for all fellowships will be announced mid-April, when program acceptance letters are sent.
“I will say that our applicant pool is up about 800 percent from years prior,” Messias said. “For a couple of years, we had a pretty low applicant pool ... One of the things our new dean (Jeanette Andrews) wants is to get our Ph.D. program up and running again. Some of the funding for the dean’s scholarship came through Dean Andrews.”
Andrews could not be reached for comment Monday but praised the new awards for “[providing] opportunities for the best and brightest nurse scholars to attend our program,” she said in a release.