Figure 4. Tuition as a percentage of M.S. TA stipend since 2000.
Other Graduate and Departmental Support and Competitive Scholarships
The Graduate School provides one New Scholar Award ($1,000) to the department annually to aid
in recruiting a highly ranked student. In addition, the Graduate School solicits nominations annually for
the Jane Logan Lackey scholarship, the Owen Graham Kenan scholarship, the Sylvia Schwarz graduate
fellowship, and the Lacy C. and Doris L. Sidbury scholarship, and a number of our students have
benefitted from these awards. The Department of Biology and Marine Biology also has additional
endowed graduate fellowships. These are the Dr. James F. and Frances B. Parnell Fellowship, for students
who are studying some aspect of field oriented terrestrial vertebrate biology; the Mulligan Fellowship, for
students who have achieved academic excellence and demonstrated exemplary service; the Frances Peter
Fensel Memorial Fellowship, established for the purpose of recognizing merit in the area of Marine
Biology at UNCW; and the Judith C. Bryan Holden Beach Turtle Watch fellowship, which recognizes
work in sea turtle conservation. There are two other scholarships that can be awarded to either an
undergraduate or a graduate student. These are the John Colucci Jr. Memorial Scholarship and the David
G. Lindquist Scholarship in Biology established for the purpose of recognizing merit in the area of Marine
Biology at UNCW.
Graduate student travel is funded largely by research grants to individual faculty members. The
Graduate School supplements these funds with $400 travel grants to graduate students who are first
authors on papers being presented at scientific meetings. The University Graduate Student Association
competitively offers students $400 for travel to meetings if they are not eligible for Graduate School funds,
and the Biology GSA offers graduate student support for registration and other costs. The department
supplies very little university or trust funds for support of graduate student travel. However, each faculty
member is provided with $500 per year that they may use to subsidize travel costs, which frees grant
money that can be applied to graduate student travel.
e. GRADUATE STUDENT PERFORMANCE MEASURES
As has been mentioned throughout this document, the scholarly output of our students is
exceptional. They have been authors on 199 peer-reviewed papers since 2007. Our graduate students
have also been authors on over 214 presentations at international, national and regional meetings.
In an effort to better capture the breadth of accomplishments of our graduate students, we initiated
a “Graduate Student Annual Report” in 2004. The reports for each of the past seven years are included in