9/23/2008
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TA/RA work starts on the business day closest to August 15th (What about for the spring semester? What is the day we have to be in after holiday break?)
- What can graduate students do to help with the TA assignment process:
- Reply to class preference email as soon as possible
- Be as specific as possible in the class preference email:
- Don't put just a single class
- Don't just paste in a list of classes
- Please rank according to preference for top 5 (10?)
- Please look at possible conflicts (with work or your classes) for classes you prefer to TA
- Absolutes are best, if you know you can't do some set of classes, say this; if you know you are qualified for some set of classes, say this
- Describe qualifications for class placement
- What can the department do to help with the TA assignment process:
- Some last minute changes are unavoidable, but we can do our best to help the process along
- Inform students in a timely manner that they are for sure funded (specific class assignments may come later)
- Possibly make a more formal waiting list
- Possibly put tentative assignments on wiki or in email in addition to posting outside of Dr. Grit's door
- Ways to help procure funding for yourself:
- Be proactive! Funding doesn't find you, you have to find the funding
- Find research groups that interest you and attend them
- Pick research areas as soon as possible (even if you may change later)
- The goal is to get to know faculty as they can help you get funding
- Talk with your advisor about funding: each faculty member has one 'chit' that is used to ensure that a student of their choice has funding
- Getting involved: Ways to engage new/current graduate students (funded and unfunded):
- need more contact with unfunded students
- Possible allocation of unused desks in the new building for unfunded students if there is space
- Send snail mail in addition to email (also use the wiki) for initial communication from the department for incoming (new) graduate students
- As the new building will have the graduate students split up more than in the USC, it would be good to organize something regularly (once a week) to keep our conversations/interaction going (GSA business)
- Misc:
- Need to merge GSA/Department wikis: Possibly find a few undergrads to supervise on doing this
- IDEA: Add wiki page that follows flow of initial TA meeting. Add ideas from the meeting if anything good comes up. Knowledge from these is then built upon each semester. Elaine: Thoughts on this?