Policies and Procedures
Policy on Selection of Graduate Student Assistants
Purpose
Teaching assistantships, research assistantships, graduate assistantships, and pre-professional graduate assistantships provide graduate students with the financial resources necessary to complete their degrees. Students who hold assistantships benefit educationally and professionally. They gain further instruction in techniques of their fields; hone their research skills; acquire pedagogical expertise necessary for an academic career; develop professional skills including leadership, interpersonal effectiveness, and performance evaluation; and have collegial collaborations with advisors that may result in joint publications and other professional activities.
Procedures
Academic departments and administrative units of the campus appoint graduate students as assistants. A student who applies for admission requests consideration for an assistantship by checking the appropriate box on the Application for Admission to the Graduate College. A continuing student applies directly to the appropriate department; the department may use the standard Application for Graduate Appointment form, the Personal History form, or a department-specific form. Selection decisions are made by departments and processed through the Office of Academic Human Resources. Academic and administrative units are responsible for notifying the Office of Academic Human Resources immediately if a graduate student assistant becomes ineligible for a waiver due to a change in status or other reason during the term of the assistant's appointment.
Selection Criteria
Each student appointed to an assistantship must meet the following minimum requirements:
- The student must be registered for terms of appointment.
- The student must be in good academic standing.
- For a teaching assistantship, the student must be orally proficient in English. Exceptions can be made for persons providing classroom instruction in foreign language classes when they are teaching in their native tongue.
Financial need is not generally a factor in awarding assistantships. The primary considerations are the appropriateness of the student's abilities to the duties to be performed, together with the relevance of those duties to the student's own graduate education.
Assistants whose academic progress and service record have been satisfactory can, in many cases, expect their assistantships to be renewed for the following year, subject to the availability of funds and the need for services. Departments have differing policies on the length of time students may hold assistantships and sometimes limit the total number of semesters that an assistant may serve. Departments may require that teaching assistants obtain and maintain certain teaching standards in order for their assistantships to be renewed.
