Professional development

Practical experience

Graduate students in Psychology and Neuroscience benefit from several professional development opportunities. These experiences complement the core academic and research elements of our graduate programs.

Teaching assistantships

Students in our Psychology and Psychology/Neuroscience programs must serve as teaching assistants during each residency year. Clinical Psychology students must serve two teaching assistantships, although they are not required to do so in their first year.

Though students are compensated for their TA work, the primary goal of the TA requirement is to train our graduate students in the cultivation and maintenance of an apprentice relationship.

TA duties may include:

• Developing lab exercises and experiments
  
• Grading of examinations and reports
  
• Conducting seminars
  
• Tutoring individual students
• Attending lectures given by the professor
  
• Some TAs may also be invited to give lectures.

TAs are assigned to and are supervised by a faculty member. Assignments are given based on student preferences and faculty needs.

Three levels of TA position are available for our graduate students, who are expected to complete the number of TA hours required of their position over the course of a 13-week semester. There are 130-hour, 110-hour and 90-hour teaching assistantships. Students can request to do more than the minimum number of teaching hours.

Departmental committees

Students in all of our graduate programs serve on departmental committees and are expected to be actively engaged in committee work.

Committee assignments are made at the beginning of each academic year in consultation with the department administrator and graduate student representatives.