Funding & Finances
The Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University does not guarantee funding to all incoming graduate students. Although an offer letter may only guarantee funding for the first year, students are always welcome to apply for other awards, bursaries, teaching positions, and scholarships. The department places no limits on the amount of scholarship funding that a student may receive provided that the total does not surpass the SFU limit of $60,000 of scholarship support per academic year. Students receiving TAships as part of their funding package are required to apply for and accept these positions.
Funding may be made up of scholarships, bursaries, awards, fellowships, Teaching Assistant (TA)/Tutor Marker (TM) positions, or Research Assistantships.
FINANCES
Additional financial resources and comprehensive graduate tuition and fee information can be found on the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies website.
- Cost of Living Calculator
- Typical Costs (click on the Canadian or International graduate links)
- Tuition and Fees
SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS
A range of internal scholarships and awards are available to new and continuing graduate students. Full information is available on the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (GPS) awards page. Applications are done through the Graduate Awards Application Adjufication System, or GA3. The Archaeology Awards Policy is available in the Graduate Handbook.
Entrance Funding and Multi-Year Funding
We recommend that students apply for Tri-Agency, SSHRC or NSERC, Vanier, and Trudeau scholarships every year that they are eligible. Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies has detailed and up-to-date information about the application deadlines and requirements on their website.
All incoming students are assessed for funding, and many are nominated for entrance Graduate Fellowships or Special Graduate Entrance Scholarships. We also nominate students for:
- Indigenous Graduate Entrance Scholarship (MA and PhD)
- Graduate Dean's Entrance Scholarship (PhD)
If there is another entrance award you might be eligible for that requires nomination, please contact your supervisor and your Graduate Program Assistant at archgrad@sfu.ca with the necessary application documents. Be aware that the major entrance awards are highly competitive.
External Awards
GPS has compiled a non-exhaustive list of other outside sources of funding.
Work-Study and Bursaries
All graduate students can apply for Workstudy and Bursaries at SFU. Please see the dates and application instructions on the Financial Aid and Awards website.
Archaeology Awards
All eligible students are considered for an entrance Graduate Fellowship (GF). If you do not receive one in your first year, we recommend you apply for one in each subsequent year. Some students who apply for the GF will be awarded a CTEF GF instead.
The Department also holds one or two Travel and Research Award (TRA) competitions per year, normally one for Fall payment and one for Spring payment.
Donor awards are adjudicated by the Department of Archaeology, the Dean of Environment, and GPS. The donor awards terms of reference, as well as other internal awards, are listed on the Archaeology page at GPS. Applications generally open in May. All students, including incoming students, may apply for these Donor awards.
Although we base our awards priority on the policy in the Graduate Handbook, we do recommend that you apply for as many awards as you can, whether you are sure you are eligible or not. Our priority list is just that - a priority list - and we have awarded students that are in between our requirements and the award Terms of Reference if we have additional funds or awards available to us.