Assistantships
Our department offers competitive teaching/research assistantships (TA or RA, respectively), as well as summer support opportunities for our PhD program; we typically do not provide support for students admitted to our MS program.
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.
Outstanding first-year students may receive additional support, as follows:
- supplemental financial support in the amount of $4,000 will be made available for two outstanding students;
- students showing a great promise of being able to start their research early in their career may be selected to receive financial support to arrive early (summer before their first year) for preparing for the required qualifying exam in Fall;
- the department will top up support for summer research from faculty for a number of students that have either taken most of their core courses within the first two semesters, or have taken the equivalent of those classes (with good results) prior to their arrival at UWM.
As students advance in their graduate studies, the base level of support listed above may increase, subject to satisfactory performance. In addition, annual prizes for outstanding research work in specialized areas of experimental and theoretical physics are also awarded.
Students may also apply for various competitive fellowships through the Graduate School, and our graduate students have a strong record of success in securing these fellowships. 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 are for undergraduates.
Teaching Assistant Program
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. The Graduate School Guidelines for the appointment of teaching assistants are available for review. Prospective students can indicate their interest in a teaching assistantship when completing the 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 Physics and Astronomy. In return, the department will ensure that the teaching assistant has valuable experience that develops skills relevant to undergraduate teaching in Physics and Astronomy.
Renewal of Teaching Assistantships
Assistantship contracts cover one academic year at a time. A student’s assistantship will be renewed up to the number of years of funding specified in their original assistantship offer, contingent on satisfactory performance in their assistantship duties and satisfactory academic performance as a student in the graduate program
Research Assistant Program
Research assistantships involve work on externally funded faculty research projects. Research assistants work on a variety of tasks as assigned by their faculty supervisor, including such activities as searching for relevant literature, collecting and analyzing data, and writing reports, presentations, and journal articles. Normally, students who take on a research assistantship during an academic year will do so in place of a teaching assistantship. Like teaching assistants, research assistants must be enrolled as full-time students during the academic year.
The availability of research assistantships depends on faculty members obtaining external research support that provides for graduate research assistants, and the nature of research assistant work and the expected length of an assignment depend on the terms of that external support. It is therefore difficult to specify in advance when research assistantships will be available and what the details of a research assistantship position may be. When there are research assistantship opportunities available in the department, the faculty members involved may issue an open call for applications or they may approach particular students whose skills and interests are an especially close fit with the position. In either case, students will be informed of the exact terms and expectations involved in the specific assignment before deciding whether to accept the position.
Assistantship Duties and Hours:
PhD teaching assistants support instructors in in-person or online undergraduate courses or act as the primary instructor for lab sections of certain courses. A student holding a teaching assistantship of 33% full-time equivalent (FTE) or more is required to complete at least 6 credits of graduate work each semester. Students with appointments of 33% FTE or less are required to complete a minimum of 8 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.
A typical graduate student “full-time” employment is a 50% appointment, which equates to working 20 hours a week for the university. For teaching assistants, a 50% appointment generally is fulfilled by teaching 3 bi-weekly discussion sections, 6 weekly discussion sections, 3 lab sections, or 15 tutoring room hours (full 60-minute tutoring hours vs. 50-minute discussion hours). For research assistants, the duties are specified by the person paying the assistantship. For fellowships, a student is theoretically free to do anything as long as progress towards graduating is made. Mixed appointments divided between TA and RA are allowed as both are eligible for tuition remission. For an up-to-date schedule of TA and RA stipends please see the UWM Graduate School website.
| Academic Year | Summer | |
|---|---|---|
| Teaching and Project Asst. | ||
| Non-Dissertator with appointment >= 33% | 6 cr. | 0 cr. (2 cr. if new TA/PA) |
| Non-Dissertator with appointment < 33% | 8 cr. | 0 cr. |
| Doctoral Prelim Exemptiona | 1 cr. for 1 semester only | |
| Dissertator | 3 cr. | 0 cr. |
| Research Asst. and Fellowship | ||
| Non-Dissertator | 8 cr. | 2 cr. |
| Doctoral Prelim Exemption* | 1 cr. for 1 semester only | |
| Dissertator | 3 cr. | 3 cr. |
*Doctoral students within one semester of completing the preliminary exam may apply to the graduate school for exemption status to register for 1 cr. for that semester only.
Resources
- Graduate stipend and credit requirement information is from the UWM Graduate School, specifically the Salary Schedules for teaching, project and research assistants.
- Tuition and general academic information is from the UWM Registrar’s Office. Fees/Tuition is listed within Registration for the semester of interest.