Jobs and Fellowships for Students

Most graduate students support themselves as teaching assistants, although some find research assistantships with RPC faculty, assistantships elsewhere on campus, or even jobs in Ames or Des Moines.

Teaching Assistantships

PhD students are eligible for up to five years of support via teaching assistantships; those who choose this teach four classes per year. TAs (even those from out-of-state) pay tuition at the in-state rate. In 2012–13, the PhD stipend is $18,100 for a nine-month appointment plus full tuition remission. Summer teaching is also often available at a per class rate of pay.

Graduate assistants receive single student health insurance coverage free of charge. Married graduate students with dependents may enroll their dependents at extra charge. Dental insurance plans and prescription drug benefit programs are also available at the student's expense.

What do TAs teach?

PhD students often start off teaching what are known as ISUComm Foundation Courses. ISU uses an innovative program, called ISUComm, that is managed by faculty from the Rhetoric and Professional Communication program and includes instruction in written, oral, visual, and electronic communication. New TAs take a seminar that prepares them to teach these classes in general and this material in particular. Many Foundation Courses are also part of a Learning Community, in which a cadre of first-year students take several classes together, thus building a small community within the larger one of the university. When TAs teach in a Learning Community, they frequently have the opportunity to collaborate with a teacher from one of the other linked classes to coordinate their work.

In addition, depending on their training or work experience, doctoral students may also teach upper-division service courses in business or technical communication, rhetorical analysis, writing for the World Wide Web and other, similar topics.

Research Assistantships

When RPC faculty receive funded research grants, these sometimes fund research assistantships for doctoral students. Such assistantships may replace one or two teaching assignments per semester. The assistantships, when available, are open for application by all doctoral students.

Fellowships, Grants, and Scholarships

Awards sometimes available to new doctoral students include the Freda Huncke Endowment Graduate Teaching Fellowship, which reduces the recipient’s teaching load for one year, and the Miller Fellowship, which provides an extra $2,500-$5,000 per year for three years.

Students may replace all or part of their teaching load if they collaborate with a faculty member on a grant or write grants of their own. In the past, students have received grants for projects ranging from curricular development in the ISUComm Foundation Courses, to computer pedagogy training, to writing research sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture.

All currently enrolled graduate students are eligible for the following awards:

• Critical Writing Award
• Quentin Johnson Award
• W. Paul Jones Scholarship
• Albert L. Walker Excellence-in-English Award
• Richard R. Wright Award