[Bgsa] TA positions

[Sharon Coe]

Hi everyone,

I don't know if the news is making its way among the Bio grad students as a
whole, but situations of people not getting TA positions, or only getting
25% appointments (half a TAship) are increasing in frequency, even for
students relatively early in their grad student careers, including
international students! It occurs to me that this might be something that
BGSA would want to discuss as a group and investigate what they may do to
let the department and/or higher-ups know that this is not conducive to grad
students completing their degrees. So far I'm not aware of any efforts on
our parts to actually make any such a statement (please let me know if there
has been some action).

A few examples that I know of.... in December a second-year student in the
Rotenberry lab was told at the end of Fall quarter that she would have no
appointment for Winter Quarter, then a while later told she would have only
a 25% appointment for Winter Quarter. Recently I heard that a student in
another lab in Winter was only given at 25% TA position. At the present
time, a different student in our lab has been told that she has not been
assigned a TA position for fall (all TA offers have been made as far as I
understand), and she is an international student. I also have not been given
a TA position for fall,  although I have seen other students at the end of
their stay in the department not being given TA positions, so I shouldn't be
surprised.

I thought I'd pass this info along in case people haven't been hearing about
this stuff. It potentially affects each continuing student who doesn't have
other funding, and it really should be a consideration for prospective
students who are considering coming to UCR.

On a totally different note..remember that BGSA list serve is not
confidential in the least...the postings are archived and you can find them
on the UCR website!

Sharon


-- 
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Sharon Coe
PhD Candidate
Department of Biology
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521

http://www.biology.ucr.edu/people/grad_students/coe.html

sharon.coe at ucr.edu
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