Assistantships and Financial Aid
Financial Aid
The Dispute Resolution Department has no role in financial aid applications or decisions.
Please contact the Office of Financial Aid Services for information on financial aid available to graduate students at UMass Boston. In general, graduate students obtain self-help programs such as loans and grants or pursue research or teaching assistantships.
Graduate Assistantships
The University offers a limited number of graduate assistantships to qualified students. Assistantships are available to Masters candidates only. Each department receives an annual allocation of assistantships, which varies from year to year.
Assistantships allocated to the Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution are generally Research Assistantships.
As a Research Assistant, the student works for a faculty member performing work primarily related to academic research. This usually includes the gathering and analysis of data and bibliographic searches of various kinds. On occasion, we are allocated positions for Administrative Assistantships.
Depending on the allocation received by the department, Research Assistants work for 5 - 20 hours per week throughout the academic year.
All assistantships carry stipends and full tuition waivers. Most also carry partial waivers of Education Operations fees. [Note that at UMass Boston Education Operations fees make up approximately two thirds of the cost of attending.]
In recent years, the Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution has been allocated partial (quarter)assistantships, which carry full tuition waivers and a waiver of 25% of the Education Operations fee.
Applying for Assistantships
You can indicate your interest in being considered for an assistantship at the time you submit your initial application, or after you receive notice of acceptance into the program. Application for an assistantship will have no bearing on the admissions decision. If you are interested in being considered for an assistantship, it is advisable to complete your admissions application as early as possible, and no later than April 15th.
Notice of assistantship awards is generally given during between April and June. This will vary,depending on when the department is notified of our annual allocation by the Office of Graduate Studies.
Current Students
Manouchka Jacques
Manouchka Jacques is a Masters student in the Dispute Resolution Program. Originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Manouchka has lived in Massachusetts for many years where she graduated from Westfield State College with a dual degree in Criminal Justice and Political Science. She completed an internship with the US Department of Justice Office for Civil Rights in Washington, DC and currently works in Human Resources for a major scientific department at MIT. Manouchka wishes to use her skills developed in the program to pursue her goals of working with the United Nations to promote and facilitate peaceful negotiations between nations in conflict, particularly Third World countries.
Robin Escobar
Robin Escobar is a Masters student in the Dispute Resolution Program. She comes with a family studies and sociology background from Brigham Young University. As an undergraduate she was involved with BYU law school's community mediation program where she became certified in basic and domestic mediation and volunteered for the program. Her interests in dispute resolution range from family issues to terrorism. She is currently working as a research assistant to Professor Sascha Sheehan. In her free time she enjoys running, playing tennis, and being part of the city life in Boston.
Scott Spiegler
Scott Spiegler is a masters student in the Dispute Resolution program. Scott graduated summa cum laude from Brown University and has spent the vast majority of his career as a software engineer working in the private sector. He recently decided to do something "for the greater good of people living and conflicting on this planet." Scott's interest in this discipline stems from his training and experience in Interfaith Dialog. As he has become more involved with conflict resolution, Scott's interest has grown to encompass conflict analysis- the pre-resolution phase, the circumstances that surround a conflict and how this conflict came to be in the first place. In his spare time, he is a classical cellist and also plays a number of folk guitars from the Latin American countries.