Graduate Assistantships

The Center awards graduate assistantships to doctoral and masters' students in three cases: (1) as research assistants to Summer Scholars, (2) as teaching or research assistants for JSU faculty members and (3) as assistants in the Center itself. Graduate assistants to faculty members perform research- and/or classroom-related tasks. Graduate assistantships extend valuable research and/or teaching experience to students. Several of them have been included as second authors on conference papers and published work.

The graduate assistantship pays students for up to twenty hours of work per week. (The assistantships offered by the Center do not pay directly for tuition or other fees.) Masters' students are paid $7 per hour and doctoral students are paid $10 per hour. Graduate assistants must be enrolled full-time during the period of their award (i.e. regular academic term or summer graduate term).

Graduate assistantships are awarded to faculty members and, in some cases, to departments with large course loads. Faculty members must write a letter to the Center requesting a graduate assistantship for a particular student. Awards are made on a rolling basis beginning in the fall term. (Summer Scholars need not make a second request if they have already included assistants in their budgets.) Students may make direct requests only for graduate assistantships within the Center for University Scholars at the end of the summer term for the following academic year.

Effective August 2005, graduate assistantships will be awarded using the following criteria.

• Graduate assistants will be awarded only to academic units, not pre-professional or support units.
• Graduate assistants will be awarded to departments without budget lines for graduate assistants.
• Priority in the award process will be given to units with low productivity (as measured by graduation rates).
• Priority in the award process will also be given to highly productive faculty members without regard to professorial rank. High productivity is measured by research publications over the past two years, teaching loads over the last two years, and service to the university over the last two years.