There are three types of financial aid available to graduate students
in the Department of Computer Science. Teaching and research
positions are awarded on a semester-by-semester basis. Teaching
assistantships are provided by the department, while research
assistantships are awarded by individual faculty serving as
investigators on research grants and contracts. A third form of
support is research fellowships (including traineeships), the terms of
which vary.
The duties and benefits of departmental teaching and research
assistantships are defined as follows:
- Teaching Assistantship: A teaching assistant is a
matriculated student employed 10 to 20 hours per week to assist a
faculty member in teaching. The teaching assistant is required to
meet with students regularly in a classroom, laboratory, or other
instructional setting; to assist in instructional duties through
lesson and materials preparation; to counsel students outside of the
regularly scheduled instructional periods; and to evaluate and grade
students' work to aid in the determination of final course grades.
Tuition waivers supplement salary support.
- Research Assistantship:
The Director of Graduate Studies assigns each research assistant to a
particular faculty member based on mutual agreement of the faculty
and student. The duties
assigned to a research assistant are consonant with the student's
research interests and also useful to the professor's research efforts. A
research assistantship can be viewed as an internship, whereby the
student learns by practicing under faculty supervision. A student wishing
to be a research assistant should inquire directly with
appropriate faculty sponsors. Tuition waivers supplement salary support.
Continuation of financial aid is dependent upon continued competent
performance of teaching or research duties, as well as satisfactory progress
in the student's program of study.
Research fellowships, such as those awarded by national foundations,
can be requested directly from the granting agency under the supervision of
the Director of Graduate Studies. In addition,
the department annually nominates outstanding graduate students for
University Research Fellowships, as well as fellowships for certain
categories of
graduate students from private corporations and federal agencies. In the past
students in the department have been awarded fellowships from
NSF, DOE, DARPA, ACM, AMOCO, Apple, ARO, ONR, and IBM.
