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Grad Student Guide

Teaching Assistant Duties

One should look over their own contract to know their duties; in general, they follow these details:

  1. Teaching three or four 50-minute classes per week. Normally these are recitation sectijons. Recitations are an important part of student learning. You are encouraged to go to lectures for the class you are TAing.
  2. Holding office hours.
  3. Grading homework and/or quizzes.
  4. Various departmental duties, such as administering precalculus assessment exams, proctoring or grading for additional courses.
  5. Tutoring or supervising tutors in the learning emporium.

The contract also describes the work environment:

Work each week may vary in time and effort as the term progresses. From time to time, working slightly over or under the 20 hours per week may occur. If you are consistently working more than 20 hours per week, your supervisor should either adjust your duties or submit a petition for approval for you to work more than 20 hours. Supervision, instruction, and feedback by your GA supervisor should be appropriate and commensurate with the work being performed. Responsibilities and duties of this assistantship should be clearly communicated and directly related to your academic duties and responsibilities. If you have concerns or feel uncomfortable about your GA duties and responsibilities, please contact your Graduate Chair and/or Graduate Division.

These above guidelines were taken from an HCREAM member's 2023 contract.

Travel

Graduate assistants that need to go on leave during the appointment period must obtain advance written approval from the department or unit of hire. The request shall be made in writing and details how the assigned duties will be performed during the leave.

Honestly this is too much for me (Alan) to digest right now, so I will leave this and this as a paper trail.

Sick Leave and Bereavement Leave

Effective Fall 2022, GAs are eligible to earn advance sick leave at the beginning of each academic semester. Up to 3 days may be taken for bereavement leave. Applying for such leave is via the online leave system.

To apply for leave, one should use the above link and use Position 0000GA09 for 9 month contracts and 0000GA11 for 11 month contracts.

One may notice that the contract does not describe the amount of sick leave granted. From the Executive Policy 9.240, graduate students on a 9 month appointment shall be advanced no more than 63 hours per year, and 11 month appointments advance no more than 77 hours per year. To find out how many sick leave hours you have balanced, go to the online leave system and click on Leave History / Current Balances / Cancel or Correct Requests at the bottom. You may also see your Work Schedule at the top, and consider that in how you use your sick leave (four working hours a weekday).

Note that sick leave may be allowed for medical, dental, optical, and optometric examination appointments that the graduate assistant cannot schedule during non-duty time.