Financial support is available to Philosophy graduate students. The most common types of financial support are teaching assistantships, in which students assist instructors with courses, and research assistantships, in which students work on faculty research projects. These assistantships provide tuition remission, an academic-year stipend, and the opportunity to purchase low-cost health insurance. Assistantships are typically awarded when a student begins the program, with the number of years of funding specified in an offer letter.
Students may also apply for various competitive fellowships through the Graduate School. Although similar to assistantships financially, the fellowships are especially attractive because they do not include the work obligations that characterize an assistantship. Information about these fellowships and links to other UWM resources is available at Graduate School Types of Funding.
Graduate students may also apply for campus-wide scholarships in the UWM Panther Scholarship Portal, through most opportunities here for undergraduates.
Teaching Assistantships
Teaching Assistantships provide funding for a specified period and include a stipend, tuition remission for both in-state and out-of-state students, and eligibility for low-cost health insurance for students and their families. Teaching assistantships are for full-time study only. Please see the Graduate School’s teaching assistant stipend rates for the current salary for each TA appointment category (non-doctoral, doctoral and dissertator). Prospective students can indicate their interest in teaching assistantship when completing the Panthera online application
Purpose
The graduate teaching assistantship program provides teaching assistance to the Department as well as financial support and professional training to students. Teaching assistants are considered University employees with the responsibility to discharge the duties prescribed by the University and the Department of Philosophy. In return, the Department will ensure that the teaching assistant has valuable experience developing skills relevant to undergraduate teaching in philosophy. When possible, students’ interests and preferences may be taken into consideration when assistantship assignments are made, but the constraints inherent in making these assignments for many students mean that this cannot be guaranteed.
Duties and Hours
MA teaching assistants support instructors in in-person or on-line undergraduate courses or act as the primary instructor for lab sections of certain courses. Teaching assistants with a 50% appointment work approximately 760 hours over the course of the academic year; an average of 20 hours per week. Teaching assistants are required to register for and complete a minimum of six graduate credits per semester.
Note that the nature of a teaching assistantship is such that the weekly workload is somewhat variable across an academic semester, due to the timing of course assignments, quizzes, exams, and papers. As a result, there may be some weeks in which the workload exceeds the average time commitment, balanced by other weeks that do not reach that average. Because of this, the teaching assistant and their supervising faculty member should discuss the workload, including assignments and schedules, at the beginning of each semester, so that students may plan in advance.
Renewal of Teaching Assistantships
Assistantship contracts cover one academic year at a time. A student’s assistantship will be renewed annually contingent on satisfactory performance in their assistantship duties and satisfactory academic performance as a student in the graduate program.