Funding and Finances

Funding may be made up of scholarships, bursaries, awards, fellowships, Teaching Assistantships (TAs), Sessional Instructor positions (SI), or Research Assistantships (RAs). Students who receive TAs as part of their funding package are required to apply for and accept these positions. RAs are typically provided from their graduate supervisor's research grants. Students are expected to apply for the scholarships, bursaries, awards, and fellowships that become available.

Applying for Awards

Apply for internal and donor-funded awards through GA3. Please ensure you login to GA3 and update your user profile. All uploads should be clearly labelled with the year and term of upload, so your Graduate Assistant knows which ones to use if you are nominated for any awards.

Award payment policies, including payment dates for the upcoming semester, are posted on the Graduate Studies Awards + Funding page.

Budget Calculator

SFU Graduate Studies has a budget calculator available on their website. It's very important to consider the cost of living in Vancouver. Connect with the Archaeology Graduate Student Caucus, and see if any of your fellow graduate students are looking for roommates, or to find out more about what it's like living in Vancouver.

Teaching Assistant and Sessional Instructor Postings

You can find more information about our TSSU positions here. Graduate students are able to apply for any TA or Sessional position at SFU, not just the ones available in Archaeology. Most new graduate students are guaranteed a TAship in their first year. Please be sure to apply for the positions to ensure you receive your full funding amount.

SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS

A range of internal scholarships and awards are available to new and continuing graduate students. Full information is available on the Graduate Studies (GS) awards page. Applications are done through the Graduate Awards Application Adjufication System, or GA3. The Archaeology Awards Policy is available in the Graduate Handbook (PDF).

EXTERNAL AWARDS

We recommend that students apply for Tri-Agency, SSHRC or NSERC, Vanier, and Trudeau scholarships every year that they are eligible. Graduate Studies (GS) has detailed and up-to-date information about the application deadlines and requirements on their website.

GS has also compiled a non-exhaustive list of other outside sources of funding.

WORK-STUDY AND BURSARIES

All graduate students can apply for Workstudy and Bursaries at SFU. Please see the dates and application instructions on the Financial Aid and Awards website.

ARCHAEOLOGY AWARDS

All eligible students are considered for an entrance Graduate Fellowship (GF). If you do not receive one in your first year, we recommend you apply for one in each subsequent year. Some students who apply for the GF will be awarded a CTEF GF instead.

The Department also holds one or two Travel and Research Award (TARA) competitions per year.

Donor awards are adjudicated by the Department of Archaeology, the Dean of Environment, and GS. The donor awards terms of reference, as well as other internal awards, are listed on the Archaeology page at GS. Applications generally open in May. All students, including incoming students, may apply for these Donor awards.

Although we base our awards priority on the policy in the Graduate Handbook, we do recommend that you apply for as many awards as you can, whether you are sure you are eligible or not. Our priority list is just that - a priority list - and we have awarded students that are in between our requirements and the award Terms of Reference if we have additional funds or awards available to us.

Department of Archaeology