Computer Science Appointment Procedures

Graduate Student Employee Appointment/Reappointment Procedures

Research assistantships are filled by individual principal investigators with CICS PhD students in good academic standing. Incoming first-year students are described by the admissions committee for all lab groups, and are informed of all groups that express an interest in them. Those students not taking research assistantships immediately usually become teaching assistants for the first year. They are encouraged to affiliate with lab groups and are informed of all openings for research assistantships.

Before each term the Teaching Coordinator identifies the "TA pool", i.e., the set of graduate students wanting teaching assistantships. Once this list is verified the students on it are assigned to be TA's for particular courses. This assignment is based on the student's expressed preferences, input from the instructors, the student's academic record, and evaluations of the student’s prior performance as a TA, if any. These assignments are made by the Teaching Coordinator. CICS PhD and Bay State Fellow graduate students in good academic standing and with acceptable prior performance as TA's are given first preference for TA assignments.

If CICS has more TA positions available than can be filled by available CICS PhD and Bay State Fellow grad students, these positions are filled by PhD students from other departments, chosen by the Teaching Coordinator as those best qualified to carry out the TA duties. These students generally apply to the college before term starts, indicating the courses for which they might be qualified. (Some of these are students who have filled CICS TA positions in the past.) CICS encourages all such applications, but cannot state in advance which TA positions might be available as this depends on the supply of CICS students in the TA pool.

CICS will offer RA or TA positions to all CICS PhD and Bay State Fellow students who are in good academic standing and who have performed acceptably in any previous RA or TA assignments. The number of students admitted to the program is based on the best available projections of the number of RA and TA positions for the coming year. CICS guarantees funding to each incoming PhD student dependent upon the student making adequate academic progress.