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Department of English

Graduate Studies

Financial Aid

The English Department offers financial aid in the form of Teaching Assistantships. Applicants who wish to be considered for a teaching assistantship should send a cover letter with their request to the Director of Graduate Studies along with the application supplementary materials.

Teaching Assistantships

Open primarily to Ph.D. students, these assistantships require that the student teach 3 courses per year (approximately 20 hours/week). The English department recognizes the necessity of teaching experience in the academic job market; thus every Teaching Assistant is given the opportunity to teach both literature and rhetoric & composition courses. Those students wishing to concentrate in Rhetoric & Composition can expect to fulfill one year of their assistantship through teaching and tutoring in the Writing Center.

Teaching Assistants are required to attend ENG 999 and WRT 999 seminars, which are dedicated to pedagogical theory and practice, during their first semester of teaching ENG courses and their first semester of teaching WRT courses. Each TA is given full responsibility for his/her classes; opportunities to teach upper-division literature courses are available to experienced TAs. In addition, interested TAs may be allowed to teach in the Women’s Studies or African/Afro-American Studies Programs. Support is renewable pending annual reviews of teaching and satisfactory progress toward the degree.

Successful applicants will be notified of assistantship offers.