Graduate Education

Graduate Student Assistantships

Graduate Student Assistants in LSA

GSAs
Graduate Student Assistantships include Graduate Student Instructors, Graduate Student Staff Assistants, and Graduate Student Research Assistants. Students must be enrolled in at least 6 credit hours in the Fall/Winter semesters in order to hold these positions.


GSIs (Graduate Student Instructors)
Graduate Student Instructors allow graduate students to share their academic discipline expertise with LSA undergraduate students. They are employed to teach in classrooms and office hours. For the specific duties on a GSI, please see the GEO Contract, Article I.B.5.
LSA requires that Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) have at least 20 hours of pedagogy training in order to prepare for teaching undergraduate students but many students have many more hours of preparation. Students whose undergraduate education was not conducted exclusively in English are given training and testing opportunities in order to teach in Michigan’s dynamic classrooms.

GSSAs (Graduate Student Staff Assistants)
Graduate Student Staff Assistants are administrative in nature and academically relevant to the student’s degree program. For a specific definition of a GSSA, please see the GEO Contract, Article I.B.6.

Hiring of GSAs in LSA
For LSA departments and programs that want to hire GSIs or GSSAs, please note that these assistantships are governed by the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) contract.
Departments are allocated a section budget by the Dean’s Office which provides the funding to support GSA’s stipend, health insurance, and tuition waiver expenses.

For questions about department section budgets, please contact Linda Blakley (lblakley@umich.edu).


Staff should contact Tom Hart (tjhart@umich.edu) for information on the process to hire GSAs. More information is on the UM Academic HR website: http://www.hr.umich.edu/acadhr/grads/index.html

Information about posting a position can be found within the UM/GEO contract. The latest contract information and a GSI offer letter template can be found on the LGRAD and LKAG CTools sites.

GSRAs (Graduate Student Research Assistants)
Graduate Student Research Assistants perform research relevant to their degree programs, usually in conjunction with a faculty member. GSRAs are not governed by the GEO contract. For more information about GSRA appointments, please see the Academic HR website:
http://www.hr.umich.edu/acadhr/grads/gsra/index.html

GSRA Rates:  http://www.drda.umich.edu/proposals/students/gsra.html

Training

Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) :http://www.crlt.umich.edu/

English Language Institute:  http://www.lsa.umich.edu/eli

Benefits: http://www.umich.edu/~benefits/


GEO Contract
http://www.hr.umich.edu/acadhr/grads/AHR%20GEO%20booklet%20web.pdf