Securing a graduate assistantship is key for many Ph.D. students seeking employment while they complete their studies. Most students dedicate 10-20 hours a week to either research or teaching assistantships, the availability of which is often tied to department or grant funds.

Since 2021, the UConn Neag School of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology (EPSY) has offered another option for a handful of Ph.D. students each year: the EPSY Scholars Program. This initiative provides each recipient with four years of funding to support their personal research and helps recruit nationally and internationally competitive Ph.D. students.

“The EPSY Scholars Program supports our department’s mission to prepare the next generation of researchers and leaders by ensuring students can engage deeply in meaningful scholarship throughout their doctoral training,” says Michael Coyne, department head and professor of Special Education.

For each student recipient, the EPSY Scholars Program combines a 10-hour graduate assistantship provided by a faculty advisor or the student’s academic program with a second 10-hour assistantship covered by the department. That second set of 10 hours is protected for the students to put toward their own personal research goals and scholarly development. Essentially, they’re funded for 20 hours a week, with half dedicated to traditional grant or teaching responsibilities, and the remainder allocated toward research goals collaboratively developed by the student and their advisor.

“I didn’t fully appreciate how critical EPSY Scholars was at the start,” recipient Kristin Simmers says. “I didn’t know what a Ph.D. looked like; I didn’t know what the expectations were for everybody else. Once I started seeing what other Ph.D. students without this support had to do, that’s when I realized this is a very big deal.”

The goals of the program are to facilitate students’ engagement with active scholarship during their studies, provide a mechanism for students to engage in research that will result in peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, and allow faculty the opportunity to support and prepare high-achieving graduate students.

“The EPSY Scholars Program empowers doctoral students to pursue research questions they are genuinely passionate about, fostering deeper engagement, motivation, and scholarly growth,” says Jacqueline Caemmerer, an assistant professor of School Psychology and advisor of the EPSY Scholars Program since its inception. “Collaborating on their student-led publications and presentations has been rewarding and enriching, often expanding the directions of my own research as well.”

Jimmy Wilson, a student in the department’s Ph.D. concentration in Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent Development, says he would not have attended UConn without the EPSY Scholars Program offer. He was living near Austin, Texas, when he applied to the Neag School, and the promise of funding allowed him and his family to move to Connecticut.

In addition to guaranteed funding, the EPSY Scholars program provided Wilson with the opportunity to conduct his own research and share it at a national conference.

“In my program, there are 10-12 doctoral students, and I was the only first-year who was able to go to the American Educational Research Association conference a couple of years ago,” he says. He paused his EPSY Scholars funding to pursue UConn’s TRANSCEND doctoral training program last year and noted the added difficulty in pursuing his own research. The EPSY Scholars program has also allowed him to give back to the academic community.

“I’ve been involved with the Neag Graduate Student Association, the Neag School of Education Journal, and professional organizations,” Wilson says. “It is a part of a Ph.D. to give service, but I’ve been able to be a bit more present because I have more flexibility with how I use this personal research time.”

Simmers has completed her Ph.D. coursework and passed her comprehensive examination in the Learning Sciences concentration. While she writes her dissertation, she has accepted the newly created role of Director of Cognition and Learning at Forman School in Litchfield, Connecticut.

The EPSY Scholars Program empowers doctoral students to pursue research questions they are genuinely passionate about, fostering deeper engagement, motivation, and scholarly growth. — Jacqueline Caemmerer, assistant professor

“By having additional time through EPSY Scholars, I was able to use it for my true area of interest, which is bridging research and practice for K-12 educators,” she says. “All of the service opportunities I was able to participate in absolutely built my network, my skill set, and led to being offered this role. It’s a dream job that I wasn’t looking for, and I don’t think it would have happened if I hadn’t had all that service experience doing exactly this work.”

For Amanda Sutter, the funding offered by the EPSY Scholars Program, combined with debt from prior master’s degrees, was one of the reasons she chose UConn instead of one of the other institutions she applied to.

A nontraditional student, Sutter worked for over 10 years as an evaluator before deciding to pursue her Ph.D. through the Educational Psychology department’s concentration in Research Methods, Measurement, and Evaluation.

“Research on evaluation is unfunded in the world,” she says. “There are no dedicated sources for it. So, EPSY Scholars was a rare time when I had funding to do this kind of work.”

That time enabled Sutter to publish three collaborative articles, two as first author and another with her advisor. She also became a junior editor for a journal in the field and credits the EPSY Scholars funding with giving her an opening to build her skills and reputation, especially as she wants to continue to publish.

“I wanted my Ph.D. so I could expand my job prospects but also support and influence the field,” she says. “It will also influence my ability to get jobs and have a name for myself. I have published more evaluation reports than I can count, but peer-reviewed publications are different. An opportunity like EPSY Scholars sets off a domino effect that facilitates a lot of opportunities.”

Those opportunities are truly tailored to each student and their interests. The flexibility to have increased autonomy in the focus of those 10 hours a week allows students to pursue what they need to advance in their research and chosen careers – all of which look different. Simmers and Sutter are already practitioners in their fields, whereas Wilson says he would love to be a professor and incorporate service to the community, research, mentorship, and teaching into his work.

“EPSY Scholars facilitates different trajectories for each of us,” Sutter says. “I’m grateful the Neag School has it. I probably wouldn’t have come to UConn without it.”

To learn more about the Neag School of Education’s Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, visit education.uconn.edu/doctoral/educational-psychology.