Department of Mechanical Engineering

Funding at ISU is available in the form of fellowships, research assistantships, and teaching assistantships.

Fellowships: Many of the fellowships are given as added money to the research or teaching assistantship.

Research Assistantship: Typically this funding comes from a research grant that a faculty member has received.  You would be expected to perform research in collaboration with the faculty member and/or other researchers to accomplish the goals of the research grant.

Teaching Assistantship: A teaching assistantship is given by a department paying the student to assist in teaching course material.  For example, this can include grading or running the lab portion of a course. Some advanced students are given the responsibility of teaching a course.

All qualified applicants will be considered for assistantships, scholarships, and fellowships. However, a limited number of fellowships are available, and early applications will be preferred.

Financial Aid Overview

Master's applicants will be considered for

• 1/2 time research or teaching assistantship with a stipend typically up to $1600 per month
• 50% tuition scholarship
• automatic in-state tuition rate for remaining tuition

Doctoral applicants will be considered for

• 1/2 research or teaching assistantship with a stipend up to $2000 per month
• 100% tuition scholarship

ISU Scholarships and Fellowships

• ISU Scholarships, Grants, and Loans
• George Washington Carver Doctoral Fellowship
• Graduate Minority Assistantship Program (GMAP)
• ISU Funding Resources
• College of Engineering Graduate Fellowship Opportunities.

The relationship that you develop with your major professor will be an important part of your success in graduate school. Further, individual faculty offer research assistantships from their own research funds, so these are funds that they alone would choose to offer you.

Therefore, it is important to start this relationship early and effectively. Faculty are looking for reliable, intelligent, hard working students who will take initiative and be responsible professionals.  It is important that you convey these aspects in your communication with faculty.

The general guidelines below apply if you are looking for funding or just a major professor.

Some prospective students send what appears to be a generic email. It is clear from these emails that the prospective student has little to no knowledge of the research that the faculty member is performing. These email contacts are typically deleted before reading far into them.

It is recommended that you carefully review the research interests of faculty and only contact the faculty who are doing work in an area that fits your educational and career goals. In this contact, be sure to clearly indicate early in the contact faculty member's research that intrigues you.

Sources of information about faculty include the M E department website, the websites for individual faculty, and the open literature.  The more you show that you have done your background work to identify the faculty member’s research program, the more likely that you will catch their attention and get them to start a dialog with you.

Be persistent in cases where you have a good match with a faculty member. They may not have an opening on their research team immediately, but by them knowing who you are, they are more likely to think of offering you a position when one comes available.