So You're Interested in a Teaching Assistantship? Read On...

So you're a prospective or current graduate student.... Naturally you want some sort of support to help you stave off starvation during your studies. Luckily for you, the university always needs help!

One of the major missions of the University of Iowa is to provide a high quality education for undergraduate students. Teaching assistants help in that mission, and our department has a variety of teaching assistantships open to our graduate students.

Unfortunately, I do not directly control the allocation of this money, so please do not directly ask me if I can provide support. My influence in these matters is directly related to how many lunches I buy the Associate Chair.... Unfortunately for you, I'm a cheapskate!

I can, however, provide a bit of information about the process.

• Our department attempts to support, either through RAs or TAs, all PhD students from admission until graduation.
• We usually provide a guarantee of support for PhD students for some (shorter) period of time.
• This support is usually contingent upon due progress. In recent years, we have had the luxury of being a little lenient on this. Don't count on it.
• We often have a number of remaining slots we can offer to promising masters students, though these may be less than half-time appointments.
• Some positions require leading discussion sections, while others involve only grading and holding office hours.
• Typically TAs for lower-numbered, larger courses will be the ones holding discussion sections.
• Teaching assistantships for higher-level courses are generally given to students with knowledge in the relevent area.
• We fund only computer science students with TA positions for CS classes. E-mails like this will not get you funding, and will likely be passed around for their amusement value.

Last Modified: Friday, November 11, 2005

Chris Wyman (cwyman@cs.uiowa.edu)