Financial Assistance

For the M.A. degree, financial assistance may be given for a maximum of two academic years (or 4 semesters). Teaching Assistantships (TA) currently pay $15,450 for half-time employment for the academic year (September through May). Half-time graduate student employees receive the same health insurance as faculty and staff for the academic year and summer at no cost to the student. Spouses and families do cost extra and premiums are deducted from the student's salary. Teaching assistants normally help professors who are lecturing to large enrollment classes, such as persuasion, argumentation, nonverbal communication, organizational communication, and interpersonal communication. 

Learn about the other benefits associated with being a TA on the University's student employment site.

Note: The salaries and fellowship amounts cited in this section are for Fall 2023, and are subject to change. We include this information only to give you a rough estimate of potential income.

For the Ph.D. degree, assistance may be given for a maximum of four academic years (or 8 semesters). Ph.D. students typically start as Teaching Assistants (TAs) and assist faculty with larger courses, but they also have the opportunity to be Assistant Instructors (AIs) in which they are the instructor of record for courses such as Professional Communication Skills or Interviewing. Ph.D. students are currently paid $20,600 for half-time employment for the academic year (September through May). Half-time graduate student employees receive the same health insurance as faculty and staff for the academic year and summer at no cost to the student. Spouses and families can be covered at an additional cost and is deducted from the student's salary. Students may add visual and dental insurance at an additional cost. 

Take a look at the other benefits associated with being an AI on the University's student employment site.

Note: The salaries and fellowship amounts cited in this section are for Fall 2023, and are subject to change. We include this information to give you a rough estimate of potential income.

These fellowships are for students who are currently enrolled or have been enrolled previously in a graduate program at UT Austin.

Selection of continuing fellowship recipients is quite unlike selection of recruitment candidates. Emphasis is placed on performance since the student entered the Graduate School, not on GRE scores or undergraduate GPA. There are fixed deadlines and reviews by faculty committees. When nominating a student for such an award, the Graduate Advisor will write a strong covering statement for each student, pointing out the superior work, publications, research projects, etc., in which the student has been involved. Faculty review committees look for departmental support in these letters in order to compare students in the competition. The continuing award provides for nine months of support, as well as an insurance stipend. Continuing Fellowship students are permitted an additional 10 hour appointment as a TA or AI. The Checklist Form to accompany each University Continuing Fellowship must accompany continuing nominations.

The Graduate Coordinator will call for applications for Fellowships in December for the coming academic year.

The College of Communication annually awards one Fellowship per department to graduate students who possess exceptional ability in advertising, journalism, radio-television-film, or communication studies. The fellowships are awarded each Spring for the following academic year. Dates of each competition are posted.

These awards are used to enable advanced doctoral students to attend professional meetings. The purpose is to get acquainted with students and faculty from other institutions, learn the mechanisms of the professional association, and arrange job interviews. Priority is given to students who are in their last year of doctoral study and have had a paper accepted for presentation at a major professional meeting. 

In addition to being informed about the opportunities described above, students are encouraged to consult the Fellowship Coordinator in the Office of Graduate Studies about fellowships administered through the Graduate School. Graduate Fellowship Programs, a brochure available from the Fellowship Coordinator, provides information about a wide variety of both Graduate School-administered and department-based awards.

Students seeking financial aid other than fellowships may obtain a financial aid information bulletin from the Office of Student Financial Services.

The General Libraries offers two sessions each semester on finding grants information on the Internet. A printed handout, "Grants Resources on the Internet," which gives general background, interdisciplinary grant sources, humanities and social science grants sources, and science, technology, and medical grants sources, is available at the General Libraries reference room.

For the Ph.D. degree, assistance may be given for a maximum of four academic years (or 8 semesters). For the combined M.A. and Ph.D., assistance may be given for a maximum of five academic years (or 10 semesters).

Assistant Instructors (AI) are awarded to persons who have a Master's degree and teach classes unassisted. Assistant instructorships currently pay $15,250 for half-time employment for the academic year (September through May). Half-time graduate student employees receive the same health insurance as faculty and staff for the academic year and summer at no cost to the student. Spouses and families can be covered at an additional cost and is deducted from the student's salary. Students may add visual and dental insurance at an additional cost. Normally, assistant instructors are asked to teach two introductory level undergraduate courses each semester, in areas such as professional communication skills, Speechmaking and Society, team based communication, organizational communication, and interviewing. Usually, the department has 25 AIs performing these duties.

Note: The salaries and fellowship amounts cited in this section are for Fall 2008, and are subject to change. We include this information to give you a rough estimate of potential income.

A decision to hire a graduate student as a teaching assistant or assistant instructor is complex, requiring consideration of many factors. The process by which decisions are made has not been and cannot be reduced to a simple formula or invariant ranking of criteria. This document attempts to explain the procedures that are followed and the criteria that are used in making these hiring decisions.

Each January, the Departmental Executive Assistant determines how many funding offers can be made. In making offers, the Chair seeks the input of the faculty in our three areas of Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication and Technology, and Rhetoric and Language Studies. Faculty in each area considers both new, incoming students and those already in residence, who do not already have a funding commitment. Based on each area's rankings, the Chair authorizes offers of employment as a Teaching Assistant or Assistant Instructor. Most first round offers have usually been made to incoming students.

The criteria used in making offers include the following:

• To further the educational mission of the Department. Graduate students who can teach or assist with courses that need to be taught receive the highest priority. Course Directors, such as the Director of 306M, are sources of advice on this criterion. CMS is unlikely to extend an offer to even the strongest students who cannot meet our instructional needs.
• To maintain a rough parity among the three areas of Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication and Technolgy, and Rhetoric and Language Studies.
• To consider the fit between a student's academic preparation and interests and the interests of the departmental faculty.

In assigning Assistant Instructor and Teaching Assistants, we experience constraints imposed by either the College or the University including the following:

• Funding available from the College in any given year
• Assistant Instructors may not, by law, be the instructor of record for upper division courses. This restricts the courses that graduate assistants may teach. Programs at the University require many upper-division courses both as degree requirements and as electives. While we would like to offer as many teaching opportunities as we can to our qualified graduate instructors, the limitations on lower-division courses counted toward the degree restricts the number of lower-division courses we can reasonably offer. Most Assistant Instructor assignments each semester will be as instructor of record of CMS 306M, our basic public speaking course.

In general, TAs/AIs are funded up to a maximum of four consecutive semesters as M.A. students and eight consecutive semesters as Ph.D. students (summer session appointments are excluded). Fellowship appointments secured through CMS/UT count as funded semesters.

If a graduate student with a funding commitment chooses to teach outside of CMS, however, the remaining years of commitment from CMS are null and void unless they have a written agreement from the Chair of the department to the contrary. CMS expects that departmental TA and AI assignment have priority over outside employment and social commitments.

Other factors include:

Academic success as indicated by several measures such as grades, publications and convention presentations, high standards of academic honesty and so forth. This includes being in good standing and making good progress toward a degree. The Graduate Advisor is a source of advice on this criterion.

Faculty preferences and requests for specific graduate students to teach or assist in courses.

Excellence in previous teaching experience, including evaluation scores, grade inflation/deflation, and supervisor evaluations. Directors of courses, such as the Director of 306M, are sources of advice on this criterion.

Good departmental citizenship, including volunteering for special projects, collegiality, service on the CMS graduate student organization, attendance at department functions and colloquia, and so forth.

TA/AI appointments are valuable experiences for future members of the professorate. The Department makes an effort to give every qualified doctoral student some teaching experiences. Students who are admitted to the program without the funding commitment described above may be appointed on a semester-by-semester or annual basis as assignments become available

Opportunities for a fifth year of funding for PhD students are occasionally available.

It is Communication Studies Department policy that grounds for the immediate termination of employment of teaching assistants or assistant instructors include the determination, after due process, of academic dishonesty such as plagiarism, falsification of data, or gross violation of UT research protocols for research on human subjects--gross dereliction of assigned teaching and course-related duties--and conduct detrimental to the teaching, research, or service functions of the department.

Failure to comply with University Policies

Unsatisfactory course instructor evaluations for more than one semester, and/or continuing and multiple individual complaints about a TA/AI's performance of his or her duties are grounds for termination of appointment.

Communication Studies Department graduate students can be funded in two ways, either as:

• Multi-semester commitment - students who are offered funding during the initial admissions process are multi-year commitments (eight long semesters for doctoral students, four long semesters for master’s student)
• Semester-by-semester basis – students offered funding at the beginning of the school year are offered funding on a semester-by-semester basis

If a student is appointed for at least 20 hours for 4 1/2 months, the student will receive from the first day of employment, the following benefits:

• Health insurance paid by the Office of Graduate Studies. This is the same health insurance as faculty and staff. Students can add dependents to be paid by the student. http://www.utexas.edu/hr/student
• In-state tuition waiver http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/employment/entitlement.html
• Tuition assistance see http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/employment/tuition/about.html

Communication Studies Department has two paid positions that can be offered to graduate students: Teaching Assistants (AI) and Assistant Instructors (TA).

At the University of Texas, Assistant Instructors must be doctoral students. However, not all funded doctoral students will start working as an AI. Funded doctoral students with little teaching experience will be assigned to TA positions while taking the introductory teaching class, CMS 398T and then can move to teaching their own classes as Assistant Instructors.

Assistant Instructors teach their own classes such as:

• CMS 306M Professional Communication Skills
• CMS 310K Team-based Communication
• CMS 313M (Survey of) Organizational Communication
• CMS 314L Language, Communication and Culture
• CMS 316L Interviewing Principles and Practices
• CMS 317C Speechmaking and Society

Generally, the first course AIs teach is the introductory public speaking class, CMS 306M. In later semesters, doctoral students may indicate interest in teaching other freshman and sophomore level classes, such as those listed above. Doctoral students may indicate interest for the opportunity to be the Course Coordinator for 306M or Head TA for 315M.

Graduate student AIs are picked for this sort of assignment based on consideration of these factors:  1) The AI’s academic preparation, including relevance to the course matter taught. 2) The AI’s record of teaching, including course/teacher evaluations and written evaluations from previous course supervisors, and acceptable grade inflation figures. 3) The AI’s appropriate progress toward a degree and strength of achievement during that progress. 4) Specific preparation for the specific course, including but not limited to “shadowing” other instructors of the course. 5) The course coordinator for 306M must in addition possess administrative competencies as well as teaching competencies, editing competency for the course book, and the ability to deal effectively with other grad students (coaching, feedback, etc.)  6) An ability to work well with support personnel in technology, office staff, other instructors, and so forth.

There is no “application” process, although AIs may express interest in teaching a course to the faculty supervisor of the course.  In all cases, the decision to appoint an AI to teach one of these opportunities is ultimately the responsibility of the faculty supervisor of the course.  All such courses have faculty supervisors.  The department chair and executive staff consult with these supervisors in assignment of AI’s to the courses.

Masters students are funded as Teaching Assistants and do not teach their own classes. The duties of a TA include creating exams, grading papers and exams, and meeting with undergraduate students and answering students' questions. The department offers several large lecture classes per semester with a need for TAs such as:

• CMS 315M Interpersonal Communication Theory
• CMS 332K Theories of Persuasion
• CMS 334K Nonverbal Communication

Initial funding is offered on a half-time or twenty hour basis. As a Teaching Assistant, the teaching load is usually being a TA for one large lecture course of about 100 students. Courses larger than 100 students will have multiple TAs. Occasionally, TA's have a split assignment working 10 hours for two smaller undergraduate courses.

As an Assistant Instructor, half-time is teaching two courses. After doctoral students have taught for a year and if there is a departmental need, some students may teach three classes or a ¾ time basis or 30 hours. Summer teaching funding is available for about three to four graduate students and usually goes to students who have high teaching evaluations in previous semesters. We do try to “spread the wealth” and not appoint the same graduate students to teach every summer. See Summer Teaching Policy.

Learn more about how the department assists graduate students financially on the Financial Assistance page.

Factors Considered For Summer Employment of AI/TAs

The Department of Communication Studies is often not able to hire all of the AI/TA's who request summer employment. Deciding whom to hire is a process that is based upon the exercise of the department staff's considered judgment. It is not, therefore, a completely objective process nor can it be made formulaic, but the criteria we use can be articulated, and that is what this memo is intended to do. In deciding whom to hire, the department staff will exercise its judgment while considering several factors listed below. Only the first, primary criterion is an absolute requirement for summer teaching employment. The other factors are weighed and considered as circumstances and needs seem to require.

The primary criterion is to further the educational mission of the Department. Graduate students who can teach or assist with courses that need to be taught receive the highest priority. Beyond this primary criterion, we take into consideration:

Academic success as indicated by several measures such as grades, publications and convention presentations, and so forth.

Faculty preferences and requests for specific graduate students to assist in courses (or requests that a student not be hired).

Excellence in previous teaching experience, including evaluation scores and supervisor evaluations.

Good department citizenship, including volunteering for special projects, service on the CMS graduate student organization, attendance at department functions and colloquia, and so forth.

Fit between a student's academic preparation and interests and the subject matter to be taught.

Previous summer funding may lower chances of future summer funding