Graduate Assistantships

Graduate student teaching in the Department of Physics and Astronomy always takes the form of graduate assistantships.

A full graduate assistantship requires an average of 12 hours of teaching duties per week. Assistantships are viewed as financial support for all of your full time activities as a graduate student including research, teaching and courses.

The normal teaching load for a student not holding a major scholarship is one-and-a-half assistantships per year, while major scholarships usually do one half asssitantship per year. Financial support is generally provided for two years for master’s students and four years for doctorate students. Funding beyond this time window is handled on a case-by-case basis.

The department assigns all teaching duties. If you have preferences, please let us know before teaching duties for the given term are assigned. We cannot guarantee that we will be able meet your request, but we take all requests into consideration.

Duties that can be assigned as part of a graduate assistantship:

• Supervising tutorials
• Supervising students in first year engineering or general studies physics labs
• Supervising second, third or fourth year laboratories
• Marking in senior undergraduate physics courses

Once you have received your teaching assignment, contact the course instructor or course coordinator to discuss the duties associated with the assistanship assignment. With the larger, first year course,s there are generally teaching assistant orientation sessions held during the September block week to discuss the duties and expected standards.