Teaching at Tufts

There are several teaching opportunities available for Arts and Sciences graduate students. The list below provides information for graduate students interested in serving as teaching assistants, pursuing college/university teaching as a career, or working with Tufts undergraduates as writing consultants.

Teaching Assistants (TAs):
Teaching assistants are resident students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who are paid to teach part-time at the university as part of their training.

Teaching assistants normally have full instructional responsibility in the recitation or laboratory sections of courses to which they are assigned, or they grade papers and examinations. International students are not usually eligible for appointments as teaching assistants in their first year of graduate work unless they have demonstrated proficiency in spoken English or they have received training at another American university.

Appointments to these positions are based upon the recommendation of a student's department chair and are effective for one academic year or one semester, but are renewable. All newly appointed teaching assistants are expected to attend the Teaching Assistant Orientation (which will be held in early September) and Teaching Assistant Workshops (which are held throughout the academic year), both of which are organized through the university's Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT).

For more information on Teaching Assistants at Tufts, graduate students and visitors to this site should either contact the department they are part of or the one they are interested in.

Teaching Fellows (TFs):
The Graduate Institute For Teaching (GIFT) offers Arts, Sciences, and Engineering graduate students the opportunity to get dense experience in teaching at the university level. The institute is broken into a series of workshops and co-teaching opportunities. During the workshops, which occur each summer, Teaching Fellows (TFs) learn about topics such as syllabus and course design, lesson planning, teaching with technology, and teacher-student relationships. Following the workshops, institute fellows co-teach a course with a Tufts faculty member. This co-teaching opportunity is a true collaboration, with each fellow taking shared responsibility of many facets of the course. Teaching fellows receive, among other benefits, free tuition for the institute, a taxable $2,000 stipend, and a transcript notation of a non-credit College of Special Studies course, "Graduate Institute for Teaching." GIFT works in collaboration with the University-wide Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CELT) and is generously supported by the Tufts Summer School.

To learn more about GIFT, call 617-627-2515 or e-mail GIFT@tufts.edu.

Graduate Writing Consultants:
The Academic Resource Center (ARC) at Tufts offers Arts, Sciences, and Engineering graduate students the chance to work one-on-one with undergraduate and graduate students as Graduate Writing Consultants. The consultants work with students on a variety of writing-related assignments and projects, including academic papers, scholarship applications, personal statements, cover letters, conference papers, senior theses, master's theses, and doctoral dissertations.

To learn more about the Graduate Writing Consultant program, contact the Academic Resource Center at 617-627-4329 or e-mail amalia.jiva@tufts.edu.

Tufts chemistry professor and department chair Krishna Kumar was named one of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by <em>Technology Review</em> for his cutting-edge research on proteins that may have many medical uses.

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The Graduate Student Council (GSC) was established in the late 1980s and provides a forum for graduate students across all the disciplines. Each year, the GSC hosts a graduate student research symposium, a Giving Tree program (which donates toys to anonymous local children in the Medford/Somerville area) and a 5k Run/Walk, an event which has raised over $35,000 for a variety of charitable causes.

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The ratio of students to faculty rarely exceeds 12-1 in any Arts and Sciences graduate program, supporting the growth of significant mentoring and collegial relationships between faculty and students.

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The Department of Education is helping meet the need for good urban teachers through its Urban Teaching Training Collaborative (UTTC). The program places education graduate students in Boston-area schools were they work closely with a mentor teacher.

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