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Graduate Teaching Assistantships
The department offers graduate teaching assistantships to those M.A. or Ph.D. candidates whose application materials and prior experience suggest the ability to create and teach first- and second-year composition courses. Through an orientation and active support systems, the assistantship invites students to engage with the range of options available to teachers of college-level reading and writing. Specifically, we encourage GTAs to develop individual teaching strategies that take full advantage of relationships between and among personal, professional, and ideological ways of reading and writing.
Graduate teaching assistantships can be offered to qualified students
in Language and Literature, Composition and Rhetoric, Creative Writing,
and to those pursuing interdisciplinary Ph.D.s. The graduate committee
evaluates applications for the fall semester in February. Please consult graduate
application materials for specific deadlines. The average assistantship
is offered for two years, or four semesters, but may be offered
and accepted for a lesser term at the discretion of the committee.
Under special circumstances, assistantships may be offered for research
duties.
First-year graduate teachers must undergo a rigorous pre-semester
orientation and attend mentoring meetings twice monthly with the
GTA mentor and fellow graduate teachers. GTAs are also required
to enroll in English 5519: Problems in Teaching English. During their
first year, graduate teachers are responsible for preparing and
teaching English 110 in the fall semester and English 225 in the
spring semester. During their second year, graduate teachers continue
to teach first- and second-year courses and are also responsible
for an additional service assignment to be chosen by the Director of Graduate Studies. Graduate teaching assistants are remunerated at
$4,000 per semester and the remission of six hours of tuition. Students
holding an assistantship are expected to take at least six hours
per semester. Teaching and research assistants are evaluated by
the Director of Composition and/or the GTA mentor during the spring
semester of each year.
Ilus davis doctoral
teaching fellowships
Every year the department of English will select
one or two I-PhD students who do not currently hold GT positions as Ilus Davis
Doctoral Teaching Fellows. The Davis Fellows will receive a stipend of $8,000
for teaching one course per semester during the year of the fellowship.
Davis Fellows will also choose a teaching mentor.
The Mentor and Fellow will meet two-three times each semester to help plan the
courses and discuss pedagogical issues. The mentor will observe the Fellow’s
class at least once during the year and write a teaching observation letter to
be kept in the Fellow’s file.
Ilus Davis Doctoral Teaching Fellowships are
awarded on a competitive basis once a year. Students may reapply for the
awards, but applicants who have not previously held the fellowship will receive
priority consideration. Students without other university funding will also be
privileged. The deadline for applications is February 15.
Applications should include:
- A
250-500-word statement explaining what role the Ilus Davis Doctoral Teaching
Fellowship will play in the applicant’s development as a teacher and scholar.
- A
sample course syllabus and rationale.
- A
teaching observation letter (or general recommendation letter if a teaching
letter is unavailable).
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