Bryn Mawr offers many forms of financial aid, including fellowships, grants, tuition awards, teaching assistantships, and summer stipends. Please see the links on the left for more information.
We usually have 5 teaching assistants in mathematics. For the 2003-2004 academic year, these stipends offered a complete tuition waiver, health insurance assistance, and a stipend of $13,000 (with a possibility of an additional $3500 for summer support).
Applicants intrested in a teaching assistanship should indicate this on their application form.
Teaching assistants are assigned to a course, or sometimes to a particular section of a course. The duties of a mathematics teaching assistantship vary tremendously but generally include preparing for, organizing, and facilitating weekly or semiweekly problem sessions, grading or otherwise evaluating students, holding office hours and working with students one-on-one, and meeting with the course instructor. Faculty work very hard to help graduate students develop their teaching skills. Although this is generally done on an informal, individual basis, we do strive to make graduate student teaching assistantship assignments so as to enhance this skill development while giving each student as broad of a teaching experience as possible. Our success in producing strong teachers is demonstrated by the frequency with which local colleges and universities that need to hire additional teaching staff seek out our graduates as well as our continuing students who have finished their M.A.'s.
At Bryn Mawr, faculty members are evaluated by students in every course they teach. Teaching assistanats are also evaluated by the undergraduate students in the courses they assist in. Completed evaluation forms are reviewed by the supervising faculty member with the TA. The originals or copies of all TA evaluations are submitted to the GSAS and become part of the TA’s file
The annual Doris Sill Carland Prizes for Outstanding Teaching are made to one of more TAs on the basis of their evaluations and recommendations from supervising faculty, which are reviewed by the Dean and the Committee on Graduate Awards. Our graduate students have also received the college-wide award for excellence in teaching.
The department is often able to grant tuition waivers for non-TA’s who are taking classes or are enrolled in Supervised Work with a faculty. Advanced students who need less direct supervision often go on "continuing enrollment" status for which no tuition is due, but a fee must be paid to cover costs of using the library and other facilities. When a student is making good progress toward the degree, we will often ask that this fee be waived.
A number of our students have employment outside the mathematics department that supports them while they are pursuing their graduate degree. In past years, students have taught classes at Neumann College, Gwynedd-Mercy College, and Germantown Friends School. We have also had students obtain their degrees while employed at nonacademic places such as GlaxoSmithKline and the Animas Corporation.
The graduate school has a fund from which students can request reimbursement for travel expenses for attending a scholarly conference. When possible, the department funds graduate students who want to attend the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings or local (less expensive) meetings.