Guidelines for Teaching and Research Assistantships

The assistantship program is designed primarily for the benefit not of the faculty but of the graduate students. It is meant to provide students opportunities to observe faculty members teaching varied subjects and employing varied pedagogical methods, to acquire course management and assessment skills, to assist faculty members in their research, and to provide financial support for their graduate studies. The following guidelines pertain principally to teaching assistants. Faculty members working with research assistants are advised to maintain their principles of fairness when setting parameters for their assistants’ work.

The key to a successful relationship between faculty member and assistant is communication. The faculty member should contact his or her assistant to arrange an orientation meeting during the week before classes begin. At that meeting, the faculty member should articulate his or her expectations of his or her assistant, inquire about the assistant’s interests, and discuss and special needs or considerations of which the faculty member should be aware. The faculty member should ask the assistant to set his or her office hours and to reserve time for a weekly meeting in which to discuss the assistant’s recent performance and upcoming tasks.

The faculty member must confirm the willingness of his or her teaching assistant to have his or her email address and/or phone number listed on the course syllabus. The faculty member must furthermore ensure that his or her assistant receives a copy of the course syllabus as soon as possible in advance of the academic term to ensure that all course materials are added to the course website and/or put on reserve in the library by the time they are needed by the students.

In paying their tuition fees, undergraduate students have the right to expect faculty members not only to deliver course content but to assess their progress from the beginning of the academic term to the end. Consequently, even if the faculty member chooses to have his or her teaching assistant grade students’ assignments and take care of other routine tasks, it is the responsibility of the faculty member to supervise the efforts of his or her assistant. The faculty member should be involved in grading major papers and midterm and final examinations. The faculty member alone is responsible for tabulating students’ final course grades and submitting them through the University’s online student information system by the college’s grading deadlines.

Providing his or her teaching assistant the occasional opportunity to teach in an undergraduate course is an excellent way to prepare the assistant for future teaching opportunities. Nevertheless, as excessive class preparation can be unfairly time consuming, the faculty member may assign his or her teaching assistant to teach no more than three sessions in any one undergraduate course during a given academic term. The faculty member must give his or her teaching assistant no less than two weeks’ advanced notice of any such assignment to allow the assistant sufficient time to prepare his or her lesson plan.

Should the faculty member request the aid of his or her assistant creating documents, compiling bibliographies, checking out books from the library, etc., the faculty member must allow the assistant no less than forty-eight hours, or two full days, to begin the task to avoid compromising the assistant’s ability to fulfill the requirements or his or her own curricular requirements in a timely manner. Should the faculty member require the assistant to check out books or other materials from the library for the faculty member’s use, the faculty member and the assistant must complete an authorized assistant form a form enabling the assistant to do so. The assistant must submit the completed form at the circulation desk at Raynor Library upon first carrying out this responsibility. The form is available on the Raynor Memorial Libraries website.