PhD Fellowships and Employment

Financial Opportunities for PhD in Environmental Science and Management Students

The Bren School strives to provide our graduate students with opportunities to make their doctoral education affordable by making it a goal to offer five-year funding packages to each admitted PhD student.

Fellowships and PhD Funding Packages

Every year, the Bren School receives state funds, which are known as block grants, that are used to support PhD students. Every PhD student at the Bren School, including international students, are admitted based on a plan for funding, which includes fellowships funded through block grants in addition to academic employment (teaching assistantships or research assistantships). The Bren School also has additional PhD funding available, thanks to the generosity of a number of donors who have provided the school with gifts and/or endowments to be used for student prizes and fellowships. Five-year funding plans for PhD students are highly individualized and will often include a combination of external fellowships, internal fellowships, grants, donor funds and academic employment. Applicants with external funding are also encouraged to apply.

Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship

As climate change transforms ecosystems and accelerates the “sixth mass extinction,” an enormous, looming question remains: how will ecosystems change and impact social systems? Answering this question requires major advances in our current understanding of the interconnections between climate, ecological, and social systems. Developing solutions will require a diversity of disciplines, lived experiences, and collaborative approaches. 

To build a sustainable future, the Bren School’s Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship selects emerging scholars interested in interdisciplinary environmental research. The program aims to recruit a diverse cohort and create an inclusive and collaborative community to support each postdoc’s research. The successful candidates will work with a team of interdisciplinary scientists to conduct innovative research on various topics, often with a quantitative focus on understanding the impacts of global change on the world's terrestrial ecosystems

UCSB abides by the Council of Graduate Schools resolution stating that prospective students are under no obligation to accept a financial award until April 15. 

Academic Employment Opportunities

Teaching Assistantships (TA)

Bren School PhD students are typically expected to work in an academic appointment as part of their funding package. Most commonly, these are in the form of Teaching Assistant (TA) positions. Bren PhD students are employed every year to teach Bren master's courses but must apply for these positions in Spring quarter for the coming year. Students should also look for opportunities outside the Bren School in other UCSB departments. Each program or department at UCSB will have its own TA hiring process and criteria: some distribute TA application announcements as a need is identified; many wait until closer to the start of the academic quarter to solicit TA applications, and others have a very formal and standardized annual TA application process. Therefore, Bren students should check the websites of the UCSB undergraduate or graduate departments they’d like to work for and look for application information. If none is available, students can contact the staff Graduate Program Assistant, Coordinator, or Advisor of those departments for details. 

Students can also subscribe to the UCSB Graduate Division's GradTeach Forum located on Google Groups. The purpose of this forum is to connect Graduate Students seeking Student Academic Employment with departments in need of additional support. Please feel free to contact the Graduate Division directly at financial@graddiv.ucsb.edu if you have any questions.

Many Bren students work as TAs in the Environmental Studies (ES) department but have worked in nearly every department on campus. Choosing a department to work for highly depends on your academic background and interests. To apply to the Environmental Studies department, students must complete the Environmental Studies Teaching Assistant Application located on their Jobs page here. Other common departments for Bren students to TA  are Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology (EEMB), Earth Science, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB). All department contact information and annual updates to posted positions can be found on the UCSB Academic Personnel’s Graduate Student Academic Appointments page (click ASE Open Positions). 

Graduate Student Researcher Positions (GSR)

A Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) is a graduate student who assists a faculty member with scholarly research and is paid from extramural funds that the faculty member has secured through funding agencies. Often, a GSR collaborates in the publication of research results, as determined by supervising faculty members. As such, GSRs are selected for their high achievement and promise or for their productive scholarship. GSRs are not assigned teaching, administrative, or general assistance duties.

GSR positions are arranged on an individual basis between the student and a faculty member who is the Principal Investigator on a research grant, and generally are not “applied for” as one would a Teaching Assistantship. Most faculty members use PhD students to fill their GSR positions and hire master's students more often as student assistants.