Financial Support
Teaching Assistantships (TA) are awarded on a competitive basis. Teaching Assistantships cover the cost of tuition and fees, health insurance, and include a bi-weekly stipend.  Current annual TA stipends are $25,000. Students accepted on program funded TA are typically awarded three years of support provided satisfactory performance is demonstrated in all areas. Students typically serve as TAs their first two years and roll-over onto an Research Assistantship (RA) in their third year. After that, the major advisor covers the student assistantship from grants. As a TA, you will be assigned, based on your educational background, a course in Biology, Chemistry or Physics to teach. The assignment is typically two 3 hr. labs or three 2 hr. labs per semester. Students with Assistantships must attend the first week of class; if unable to comply with this policy, the Assistantship will be forfeited. Assistantships are only valid for the year offered, students deferring to a later cohort will need to reapply for the assistantship and be reconsidered with their new cohort.
The program strives to keep teaching assignments the same for each student, but sometimes this is not possible due to the precise teaching needs of our partner Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Physics in any given semester. If the same teaching assignment is not available, then the affected student will need to choose from one of the following options:
- accept the new teaching assignment
- ask for supplemental support from their faculty mentor for that semester (e.g., $4,850.60 in 2021/2022; rate based on AY adjunct rate) to offset the loss of funds that are normally received from the department to the BMOL program
- choose to use a semester of RA support early (requires agreement by the BMOL program, the faculty advisor, and the student)
- receive a lower stipend for that semester due to the loss of adjunct teaching funds provided to the BMOL program (i.e. the semester stipend will be ~$4,850.60 lower than normal because the student will not be teaching that semester).
Students seeking RA support should contact individual faculty members to explore their availability of funds. Research assistantships cover the cost of tuition and fees, health insurance, and include a bi-weekly stipend. Current annual RA stipends are $25,000, although some major professors pay slightly higher stipends.
Additional scholarships and funding opportunities can be found on the Graduate College’s Scholarship page.
Teaching Assistant Training and Assignments
Your duties will vary somewhat with the course(s) to which you are assigned. You should not delegate your assigned responsibilities to other graduate students without the approval of the course instructor or lab coordinator. As a TA, you should not institute change in the laboratory courses without specific approval of the faculty member in charge of that course. You are expected to be present on campus from your official start date until final grades are submitted. If you should become ill and unable to fulfill your teaching duties, you should promptly notify the individual in charge of the course and work with them to find a suitable substitute. Your teaching performance each semester will be evaluated by anonymous student course evaluations that are performed by the academic department that you teach for. This information should be shared with you, your major professor, and the program director. You should use this feedback to improve as an instructor. This information will also be considered as part of your semester performance evaluation.