Programs & Services » Graduate Student Instructor Program
In collaboration with UT’s academic departments and graduate student support organizations, the GSI program, offered by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), provides opportunities to advance graduate students’ pedagogical, academic, and professional progress. The GSI Program is an initiative of the Office of the Provost, the Office of Graduate Studies, and the CTL.
This site provides pedagogical support for graduate student instructors in a variety of areas--such as lecturing, discussion, and assessment. The instructional content is focused on evidence-based teaching strategies, and features video clips of exemplary graduate student instructors who were once 398T students. Visit the site here.
CTL staff offer a wide-range of 398T Workshops to facilitate learning, enhance instructional effectiveness, and integrate technology into teaching and learning. These are requested by 398T faculty. Some sample workshop topics are learning theory, motivation in the college classroom and successful discussion sections. Visit our site here, and to view our complete offering of workshops, please download this list.
To support integration of technology into the college classroom, CTL staff offer training for Blackboard and other technologies that can enhance teaching and learning. These workshops focus on participants gaining hands-on experience learning how to build a Blackboard site. Training on integrating technology such as clickers, blogs, and wikis is also offered. Download the fall schedule of our workshops here, and visit the site here.
Email request to ctl-consultants@utlists.utexas.edu
GSIs commonly find instructional coaching helpful during their teaching career at UT-Austin. CTL staff devoted to GSI-specific teaching needs are available to support and advise you on all aspects of teaching such as syllabus and instructional activity design, effective classroom management, and even strategies for inspiring (or re-inspiring) you and your students.
Email requests to ctl-assessment@utlists.utexas.edu
Frequent feedback from students assists instructors in meeting students’ needs. The CTL assessment consulting team is available to meet with GSIs interested in designing their own feedback instruments, or to discuss the use of other assessment tools. They can assist with planning formative and summative assessments, creating rubrics, analyzing exam questions, and interpreting results.
As part of the continued support provided by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) for graduate student instructors, we have created the Graduate Teaching Scholars Certificate Program for current Assistant Instructors at UT-Austin. This seminar is designed to broaden participants’ pedagogical knowledge in their specific field and to support their development as a future faculty member of the professoriate.
Click here for additional information and to apply.
Graduate students may be appointed as a Teaching Assistant, Assistant Instructor, Graduate Research Assistant, Academic Assistant, Assistant (Graduate) or Tutor (Graduate) for up to 14 long semesters while pursuing a graduate degree at The University of Texas at Austin.
Click here for more information.
**Essays for the ASPECTS certificate program will be accepted through May 31, 2012. If you have completed the necessary workshops to apply for an ASPECTS certificate, please download the following documents: essay instructions, sample essays one and two, and the essay rubric.
If you have any questions please email: gsiprogram@austin.utexas.edu or call (512) 475-9397.
“I’m interested in writing as communities and writing on the web, and that’s very much process-oriented than goal-oriented. It’s a question of how you capture that learning experience. If you define it by the end-product, then you have a problem because the end-product doesn’t always work out. But, if you define it by process, then it opens up a lot of opportunities for the students to learn about the way the world works in terms of communication.”
Sean McCarthy
Graduate Student Instructor -- Department of English, College of Liberal Arts
“While some graduate students will pursue careers in private industry and government, many plan to pursue careers within the academy - to research and to teach. Future faculty members are the graduate students of today.”
Dr. Victoria Rodriguez
Dean of the Graduate School -- Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and Department of Government
Visit our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter to get more information about upcoming opportunities (such as presentations offered at UT-Austin about effective teaching techniques, fellowships for graduate students, etc.) and to connect with other graduate student instructors at UT-Austin. You can also contact us at: gsiprogram@austin.utexas.edu.