Graduate Assistantships

There are two types of Graduate Assistantships, Teaching and Research. If you are on a 50% appointment (requiring 20 hours per week of work), the fund that pays your stipend will also pay your in-state tuition and the Graduate School will directly pay any out-of-state tuition that is assessed. If you are on 25% appointment (10 hours per week of work), the Graduate School will pay any out-of-state tuition but you must pay your own in-state tuition.

Regardless of the type of Graduate Assistantship that you may receive, the student must pay all supplemental fees themselves.

Teaching Assistantships

Teaching Assistantships require that a student be competent in both written and spoken English. Students who graduate from an undergraduate institution where English was not the language of instruction must take the Test of Spoken English before they can be considered for positions requiring live instruction (such as a being an undergraduate lab class instructor). TAs that have not passed the TSE or equivalent can only qualify for grading assignments, which are both few in number and usually have heavier workloads than TAs leading laboratory sections. Applicants from these non-English instruction institutions that are requesting TA funding are strongly encouraged to take the TSE as soon as possible in their current location and to submit their TSE scores as part of their application materials.

Our graduate students may be considered for work as TAs for Physics, Chemistry, ELEG, CHEG, and MSEN, depending on the background of the individual student. TAs are generally paid about $1500 -$1800 per month, depending on the department in which the TA is located.

Individual professors, through research grants that they win in the highly competitive marketplace, directly fund Research Assistantships. Students are selected directly by these professors to work on the specific research projects supported by these funded grants. Students hired by a professor in a RA position are expected to align their own research (in support of their theses or dissertations) with the research of their hiring Professor. In a typical workweek, the student would do 20 hours of work directed by his or her major professor and then do additional research in the professor’s laboratory in support of their thesis/dissertation. In this way, both the professor and the student make progress toward their common research goal in a shorter calendar period than would otherwise be possible.

Research Assistantships

Research Assistantships generally pay about the same as a TA in that professor's department, although individual researchers may budget higher stipends in their proposals in an attempt to attract top graduate students.

The MSEN Graduate Program acts as an agent for MSEN students to match their talents and interests with RA and TA positions as they become available. RA positions may become available at any time due to graduation of current students  or new research grants being approved for funding.

As an agent for both MSEN students and faculty, the MSEN director uses knowledge of both the open positions’ requirements and MSEN students’ skills to quickly arrange job interviews that seem likely to produce strong partnerships. It must be noted that these interviews are very similar to job interviews after graduation – they are only opportunities to compete, not guarantees of being given the new funded position. For a MSEN student to win an appointment, the student must convince the hiring supervisor that they can together form an effective partnership that will result in the goals of both parties being attained.

Students can obtain funded TA or RA positions before arriving on campus on the basis of such things as their academic record, their GRE scores, their record of prior research, and strong recommendations from faculty. However, the chances of a new student competing successfully for new positions are much higher if the new student is already on our campus, taking UA graduate classes and volunteering in a research laboratory under a professor whose research matches their own interests. The fact that UA professors can directly observe the work ethic and academic capabilities of an on-campus student gives that student a distinct advantage over off-campus students who are represented only by paperwork.