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Guidelines on reappointment of graduate teaching assistants

(revised August, 2009)

Important note: Students who began their graduate studies prior to Fall, 2009 are still governed by the old renewal guidelines.

1. Graduate assistants will be notified in early March concerning the renewal or non-renewal of their assistantships for the following academic year. In some cases, renewal may be contingent on earning suitable grades in the spring semester, and if this condition is not met, another letter will be sent to the student by early June. The requirements for renewal will be clearly stated in the letter of reappointment. Furthermore this letter will mention how much longer the student can expect to receive support, assuming normal progress towards the degree. As is specified below, some assistants will be renewed only for the fall semester of the next year.

2. Graduate assistants are accountable to the Graduate Committee for their academic performance and to the Undergraduate Office for their teaching performance. The Graduate Committee controls renewals of graduate assistantships and will act not to renew in any case where the Undergraduate Office so recommends based on a documented record of unsatisfactory performance. The student may appeal to a review group consisting of the Associate Chairs for Undergraduate and Graduate Studies, the Director of the student's program (MATH, STAT, or AMSC), the Department Chair, and the student representative to the Graduate Committee from the student's graduate program, or their designees. Only the faculty members of this review group will be allowed to vote.

3. A necessary condition for renewal of an assistantship is satisfactory and responsible acquittal of all teaching duties, as determined by the Undergraduate Office. A detailed description of these duties may be found in the document, "Responsibilities of Graduate Assistants."

The following applies only to the subset of graduate assistants who satisfy the conditions of paragraph 3 above. They constitute a set of sufficient conditions for the reappointment of graduate assistants on the basis of their academic progress. In the following, "year" means "year of graduate study in any of the MATH, STAT, and AMSC programs at Maryland," not the year of support as a graduate assistant. These conditions may be suitably modified for a student who begins graduate study in the spring semester or takes a semester off, or for a student who needs to make up for undergraduate deficiencies in the first year. Another note: For students in the Applied Mathematics concentration of the AMSC program, "written qualifying examination" may in some cases be replaced by its equivalent in other departments. In BMGT, this may mean two written examinations (since they only cover one semester of material each), and in CMSC this may mean "qualifying requirement".

The assistantship of a FIRST-year graduate student will be renewed for another year if by the end of the academic year the student has completed 12 credit hours of approved courses taken at Maryland with a grade point average of at least 2.75. The letters sent in March will be conditioned on this requirement being fulfilled in May.

The assistantship of a SECOND-year graduate student will be renewed if the student has completed 24 credit hours of approved courses at Maryland with at least a 3.0 grade point average. Moreover at least 15 of these credit hours should be taken at the 600/700 level. (Again, the letters sent in March will be conditioned on this requirement being fulfilled in May.)

In addition, a second-year student must have completed the appropriate one of the following requirements:

Ph.D. students (except for AMSC students in the Scientific Computing concentration) must have passed one written qualifying examination at the Ph.D. level by January of the second year. An AMSC student in the Scientific Computing concentration must instead have completed the core courses AMSC 660, 661, 662, 663, and 664, each with a grade of at least a B-, by the end of the second year. (Again, the letters sent in March will be conditioned on this requirement being fulfilled in May.)
M.A. or M.S. students electing the non-thesis option (again except for Scientific Computing students) must have passed one written qualifying examination at the master's level by January of the second year. An AMSC student in the Scientific Computing concentration must instead have completed the core courses AMSC 660, 661, 662, 663, and 664, each with a grade of at least a B-, by the end of the second year. (Again, the letters sent in March will be conditioned on this requirement being fulfilled in May.)
M.A. or M.S. students electing the thesis option must have their advisors confirm that satisfactory progress is being made on the thesis. Scientific Computing M.S. students must also have completed the core courses AMSC 660, 661, and 662, each with a grade of at least a B-, by the end of the second year. (Again, the letters sent in March will be conditioned on this requirement being fulfilled in May.)

In the absence of exceptional circumstances, in order to remain in the program and to maintain funding, a THIRD-year graduate student (except for Scientific Computing students) must pass ALL THREE of the written qualifying examinations at the Ph.D. level by the end of the January examination cycle. The assistantship of a third-year Scientific Computing student will be renewed if the student has completed all the Scientific Computation Core Courses and Core Science Courses by the end of the third year, with a grade-point average in these courses of 3.5 or better.

The assistantship of a third-year M.A. or M.S. student will generally not be renewed.

The assistantship of a FOURTH-year graduate student will be renewed if the student has been admitted to candidacy to the doctoral degree by March 1 of the fourth year. A student who has passed all candidacy requirements except for the preliminary oral examination will be renewed only for the fall semester, with extension to the spring semester conditioned on passing the oral candidacy examination by the following November 1.

The assistantship of a FIFTH-year graduate student will not be renewed automatically, but may be renewed on a case-by-case basis if the thesis advisor certifies that the student is close to finishing the doctoral dissertation.

The assistantship of a SIXTH-year graduate student will generally not be renewed.

To help ensure that every student is on track to fulfill these requirements, in the following cases, a student will additionally be asked to meet with the director of his or her program (MATH, STAT, or AMSC) concerning his or her academic progress. At this meeting, a letter will be signed both by the program director and by the student, outlining a plan to fulfill the above requirements. Students to whom this applies are the following:

any student whose grade-point average falls below 3.25.

any second-year student who has not yet passed a written qualifying examination, or for Scientific Computing students, who has not yet passed AMSC 660-662, each with a grade of at least a B-.

any third- or fourth-year student who has not been admitted to candidacy.