Assistantships

Clinical Psychology Ph. D. Program Student Handbook

The administration at Adelphi recognizes the financial needs and significant investment of students in the Derner School of Psychology PhD program. Since 2016, the University has significantly increased the financial aid budget in order to provide graduate assistantships for all members of the incoming first-year class. All decisions regarding graduate assistantships are reviewed by the Admissions Committee, which also functions as a Financial Aid Committee.

All graduate assistantships require one hour of work per week during the 30 weeks of the academic year for every $1,000 of financial aid. The aid is always provided in the form of tuition remission, with half of the total amount given for the fall semester, the other half for the spring semester.

Each graduate assistant is assigned to a particular professor, who decides what work the student will do, and a time schedule for its completion. It is not necessary that the student works exactly five hours in each week; the professor may decide that several hours will be worked in a particular week, fewer hours in other weeks. Since there are 30 weeks in the academic year, a student receiving a $5,000 assistantship must work a total of 150 hours, and the professor decides when the work should be done. The Graduate Studies Coordinator will verify the graduate assistant’s hours with the faculty on a monthly basis.

Each year, all our students receive at least $15,000 assistantships (a few may be eligible for more). The decision as to which students receive the larger assistantships is based on a variety of factors, including previous academic or professional accomplishment and financial need. Also, the Derner School of Psychology has a commitment to recruit and train minority students, and this is also a factor considered when financial aid decisions are made.  

The expectation is that an incoming student receiving financial aid will continue to receive aid for all four years. However, this is contingent on satisfactory academic progress in general as well as on satisfactory performance as a graduate assistant. Faculty can decide to reduce or remove a graduate assistantship based on poor academic or professional performance. At the end of the academic year, faculty members prepare evaluations for their graduate assistants, and express their preferences with respect to having the same assistant the following year. The students are also asked for their preferences, and every attempt is made to accommodate both professors’ and students’ preferences.

Finally, there are graduate assistantships offered to Derner students by other departments at Adelphi. These departments at Adelphi, such as the Admissions Department and the Center for Academic Enrichment and Support, have their own budgets and make their own decisions, but they always do so after consulting with the Dean and Associate Dean.