Graduate Student Handbook
Basic Information for Graduate Students
Students should check their email each day. Email is the official means for posting all announcements in the graduate program. Students should also periodically check the English Department home page for announcements of news and upcoming events or deadlines.
Registration
For each semester that you hold a teaching or research assistantship, you must be registered for courses and/or research hours. All students should use the on-line registration and course preference system, which will alow you to give us your preferences for what you would like to teach in the next semester, and what courses you would like to be registered for. Our first priorities in registration are to accommodate as many first-choice requests for courses as possible. Your preferences for teaching are far less flexible, as they are dependent upon departmental need. After the registration information has been retreived from the system, Kathy Williams will attempt to register all students. After she has completed the initial attempt, she will put a message on the grads list reminding all students to check their registration with ISIS. If there are any problems with the registration, students are to see Kathy Williams about making changes. It is the Department’s responsibility to register students, but it is the students’ responsibility to verify that they been registered for the correct courses and correct number of hours. All payroll papers and fee waivers depend on a correct and timely registration. For more information on registration, see the “Registration Information” section of this Handbook.
Payroll
Initial entry into the University payroll system requires many forms, with additional forms for all international students. The basic forms are a completed W-4, a copy of the social security card, a loyalty oath, etc. International students must present I-20, etc.
A letter of contract was part of the Department’s initial offer. For renewal each year, a letter of contract is given at the end of the spring semester, after annual review of all students’ progress. Each semester, Kathy Williams must prepare two documents: the GS705 (rate of pay, title of position, and length of appointment) and a letter of appointment, which specifies the above information and your duties. The letter of appointment must be signed each semester.
In addition, the fee waivers for students on assistantships are posted each semester. These fee waivers are to be posted by the day University fees are due. The Department attempts to post those fee waivers before financial services deducts money from financial aid that some students take out, but that is not always feasible. Students are to be prepared for such delays.
As of now, graduate students in the Department are paid on a 9- biweekly semester pay system, which means that graduate student paydays are not the same as those for faculty. Please be aware of the difference.
Requests for Teaching Preferences, Syllabi Review & Course Assignments
Each semester students are asked for their preferences as to what courses they would like to teach in the coming semester. In addition, students may request to teach special topics courses (ENC 1145, AML 2410) by submitting a proposal to the General Education Committee. Students must remember that Departmental needs supersede any request; those needs obviously include ENC 1101 (including AIM) and ENC 1102 (including AIM). In other words, most of the teaching will be in those courses.
Students need to fill out the teaching preference forms and return them by the date specified.
Each student will be assigned a course or courses for the next semester after course registration has been completed. Then students will be notified of their teaching assignments, and syllabi will be due for review shortly thereafter. Occasionally assignments will have to be changed because of registration changes, but the Department attempts to keep such changes to a minimum and appreciates the generosity and flexibility of many of the graduate students in this less than acceptable situation.
Summer Payroll & Course Assignments
Summer pay, as is advertised in the basic information for the English Department, is at a lower rate than during the regular academic year. At present, the rate is at $2900 per course. The Department hopes to better that rate each year.
Summer appointments are dependent on satisfactory progress, with GPA and advancement in the program determining the order of appointment. Unfortunately, certain students will go to the waiting list until the budget and student enrollment are settled (sometimes as late as the beginning of summer B term).
Annual Review
In March or early April of each year, students are asked to indicate on the designated form whether they wish to request the renewal of their assistantship and how many courses they are requesting for the coming year. In April, the Departmental faculty provide information to the Graduate Studies Committee and the Coordinators in order to determine the renewal of the teaching assistantships and the satisfactory progress of all students.
Teaching Awards & Evaluations
All teaching assistants are evaluated each year. In the first year of the MA, that evaluation is done by the Director of Composition, Sid Dobrin. After the first year, students are eligible to participate in either of two different processes of evaluation: the awards process, in which evaluation is undertaken by faculty members of the General Education Committee and the Graduate Studies Committee, and the non-awards process, in which evaluation is undertaken by a faculty member or award-winning graduate student chosen by the TA. A student must participate in the awards process at least once every three years.
Travel
The Department supports one request for funds per graduate student per year for travel to a conference to deliver a paper. The Department provides funds for airfare (not to exceed $300 for local travel, $450 for West Coast and international) plus 2 days of per diem ($200). To apply for Departmental travel money, complete and submit a Departmental travel request form, available from Loretta Dampier. There are no deadlines for making this request, but please be aware that travel funds can run out over the course of the year.
Additionally, the Department supports travel to the MLA or other similar conferences for the purposes of interviewing for jobs. Currently this support is a one-time-only grant in the amount of $500. PhD students and alumni who have received their degrees within the past two years are eligible for this money, provided that they can show evidence that they have a job interview.
The Graduate Student Council also makes funds available for graduate student travel.
For this year, there are additional funds for travel available from the Coordinator made available from the funds previously used for the graduate student essay prize.
