Scholarships

There are a number of scholarships available to students entering the program. A list has been provided with links below for further information. Please note all scholarship and award applications MUST be submitted through the department, with the exception of the SAC Scholarship Awards, Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarships (AGES) Indigenous and FGSR travel awards.  For more information on funding your graduate education visit FGSRs Awards and Funding webpages.

Students can only apply to one agency, the choice of which is dependent on the topic of their CSD 900 or thesis research. Please discuss this with your supervisor once your topic has been identified in the fall of your first year. More information will be provided about these scholarships early in the term.

Original transcripts are required for NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR awards from all institutions including the University of Alberta. Students should request transcripts in lots of time.

 

Entrance Scholarship - U of A Course-based Master's Scholarship

Eligible students must have the following:
  • GPA of 4/4
  • all prerequisite courses complete

There are no additional applications to fill out. Successful applicants are admitted to the MSc-SLP program and their application is forwarded to FGSR to be considered for the Entrance Scholarship. This scholarship is described under the FGSR Scholarships link below.

Applying for major scholarships

The research component of the MSc-SLP program

The major scholarships are available to our students because of the requirement for research experience through either a CSD 900 project or a thesis.

The process for assigning students to theses and projects is as follows:
There is a Research Fair early in the first term of the student's program, at which professors present topics that they would like to supervise; then each student submits a form ranking 5 or more projects (and 3 or more thesis topics/supervisors, if interested in a thesis) in order of preference. The Project/Thesis Selection Committee assigns students to a topic and supervisor based on their preference lists and supervisor workload. Students who wish to do a thesis must discuss it with the potential supervisor in advance.

Funding possibilities related to research area
The three funding agencies of the Canadian "tri-council" offer Canada Graduate Scholarships for students in Master's programs with a research focus (such as ours). These are substantial (approximately $17,000). The three agencies are: Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Students may apply to only one of the three councils, dependent upon the subject matter of the proposed research. The tri-council awards come up very soon in the first term of the program, so if you can do some reading and thinking in advance, it can be an advantage.

If you are thinking about a thesis, then you should contact a potential supervisor (or more than one) in the summer before you begin the program. That person could help you refine your ideas and choose the council that is most closely related to that topic. The same goes for course-based route - if you have a topic that you would like to pursue, please feel free to contact the supervisor(s) most likely to be involved in the research to discuss possible CSD 900 projects. However, with CSD 900 projects, it is likely that you would need to participate in a topic proposed by the supervisor with a small group of students. For both projects and theses, students will not know whether they have been assigned to the topic of their choice until the committee makes the assignments after the Research Fair. This means that it may not be possible to do all the work for an application in the summer before beginning in the program, but it is advantageous to do some reading on a topic of interest and speak to potential supervisors of that topic, so that when the time comes to apply, you have some background to expand on.

For all of these awards, the Department sends out information about deadlines and procedures at the appropriate time.