The Baylor Graduate School already offers doctoral students full tuition waivers, competitive stipends, access to health care (including an 80% insurance subsidy for fully-funded students), and generous travel funding that helped our graduate students to make more than 700 conference presentations last year.
We have now added–through our partnership with 4 of Baylor’s academic colleges–one more piece to our package for doctoral students: a fully-funded postdoctoral fellowship.
Launching in 2023-2024, Baylor doctoral students who complete their degree within five active years of enrollment will be eligible to compete for postdoctoral teaching fellowships within the College of Arts & Sciences, the Honors College, the School of Education, and the Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences.
The 10-month fellowships will include a salary of at least $40,000, continued access to graduate school travel funds, and the same health benefits as Baylor faculty. The postdoctoral fellowships will be guaranteed for one year, but may be renewable for up to two years in some departments. Successful fellows will benefit from a year of postdoctoral job security as well as a year of considerable teaching experience—both which will strengthen their competitiveness on the job market.
Currently, Baylor doctoral students within programs relevant to the participating colleges who began their doctoral work in 2018-2019 or after and will complete their degrees within 5 active years of enrollment are eligible. Students who anticipate eligibility should submit a brief letter of intent, which includes the endorsement of their Graduate Program Director, and their c.v. to the Baylor Graduate School by Fall 2022 (details TBA). After confirmation of their 2022-2023 graduation, the Baylor Graduate School will work with the relevant colleges and department chairs to offer a limited number of postdoctoral teaching fellowships for 2023-2024.
We are so pleased to offer this postdoctoral fellowship to our doctoral students. It is a powerful recruiting that will help Baylor bring in top students. It provides a strong incentive for graduate students to complete their degrees within a timely fashion, as it offers the opportunity for a well-funded 6th year at Baylor that can comfortably support new graduates as they are embarking on the job market. It prepares newly-minted PhDs for the competitive nature of the job market, as it provides them important teaching experience and allows them to enter the job market with PhD-in-hand. It also supports undergraduate education at Baylor, as it provides a deep pool of well-qualified PhD instructors who are already experienced teaching Baylor students.
At the same time we are announcing the postdoctoral teaching fellowship program for Baylor doctoral graduates, the Office of the Vice Provost of Research has already launched a national postdoctoral hiring program for top graduate students who earned their degrees outside of Baylor to come and work with Baylor research faculty (especially in the STEM fields). Taken together, these two programs will significantly increase the presence of postdocs at Baylor.
Currently, the College of Arts & Sciences, the Honors College, the School of Education, and Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences have partnered with the Graduate School to launch Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowships. The Baylor Graduate school would like to expand this program for as many graduate students as possible. We invite you to join us in making postdoctoral fellowships for Baylor doctoral students a regular part of our academic landscape.