B(5)

ROBINSON COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR MASTER'S STUDENTS

Financial assistance (in the form of research assistantships, scholarships, and non-resident tuition waivers) is an important factor in attracting an increasing number of outstanding, full-time students to the College's master's programs. This document contains policies and procedures for allocating these various forms of college-level financial assistance to master's students; this document does not pertain to externally-funded research assistantships or scholarships provided by funds granted by the donor to academic units.

Eligible Master's Students

Eligibility requirements for all types of college-level financial assistance include:

1. Full-time student status, defined as registered for 9 or more hours of appropriate coursework per semester (excluding summer), except for specific scholarships that specify that part-time students are eligible.
   
   
2. Strong academic promise as reflected in admissions credentials including grade point average, GMAT scores, and work experience.
   
   
3. Satisfactory academic standing, defined as a 3.0 or higher cumulative grade point average and no grade below a "C."

Forms and Amounts of Financial Assistance

There are three types of possible financial assistance available:

Out-of-State tuition waivers

Graduate Research Assistantships (GRA I)

Scholarships and fellowships

The maximum number of semesters of support from any of these three types of financial assistance normally should not exceed five semesters, which is the number of semesters in which a full-time student would be expected to complete a master's program.

The College receives a fixed number of out-of-state tuition waivers from the University each year. The number to be allocated to master's students will be determined by The Office of Graduate Student & Alumni Services. Similarly, the amount of GRA 1 budget for master's students will be determined by the Dean or his designee on an annual basis. The availability of scholarships and fellowships is a function of the existence of such funds in the GSU Foundation; the Dean will determine the amount of these funds that will be available for awards each year.

Procedures for GRA Appointments and Assignments

The Director of Master's Admissions, subject to the GRA I budget constraint provided to it, will award these assistantships to students, normally during the fall semester, to be effective for the five semesters of the coming academic year.

In early June of each year, the College conducts budget conferences with each department in the College. As a result of these budget conferences, academic units are sometimes provided with a master's-level GRA I budget, primarily in cases where they have relatively few doctoral students to be hired as GRA's to support faculty research.

Once the academic units which will receive a master's GRA I budget have been identified through the budget conferences and the master's-level students to be awarded graduate research assistantships have been identified by the Director of Master's Admissions, students will be assigned to those academic units who have a master's GRA budget. These students will be appointed to and charged against that department's master's GRA I budget. In making these assignments, consideration will be given to both departmental needs and the interests of the students. RCB departments, other than academic units, which have a master's GRA I budget will also be requested, but not required, to accept assignment of students.

The general criteria pertaining to academic standing, satisfactory performance as a GRA, minimum hours of enrollment, and outside employment that pertain to the appointment of doctoral students as GRA's will also apply to master's-level GRA appointments. These criteria are contained in the College's document titled "Research and Teaching Assistantships for Doctoral Students: Policies and Procedures" (Section B(3) of the RCB Policies and Procedures Manual).

(Approved by the Executive Committee August 8, 1988)