Teaching Assistantship Program

In accordance with its mission to provide the best possible education for its graduate students, the History Department has introduced a new Teaching Assistantship program as an integral part of its graduate curriculum. Along with the new seminar on “Teaching History,” this program compliments the History Teaching Track. Graduate students who participate as teaching assistants will receive training under the direction of department members who have had many years of teaching experience and also have distinguished publication records.

The History Department is breaking new ground with this innovative teaching assistantship program, which will benefit several categories of graduate students. The program will strengthen the credentials of students who apply to doctoral programs after receiving the M.A. at UMB and, in the process, apply for assistantships in Ph.D. programs. It will also provide teaching experience, and thus reinforce the credentials of students when they make applications for teaching positions. It will give them a head start as they embark upon their careers, either at the community college level or in secondary education. For high school teachers, the program will provide insights that will improve their teaching by enhancing their sensitivity to historical ideas and the means to communicate them to students.

In their graduate classes at UMB, students already learn how to interpret historical events in a critical manner. The department hopes that the Teaching Assistantship program will reinforce these skills, and that its candidates for the Master’s degree will thus bring to their own teaching a fresh outlook. The experience of being a teaching assistant will also strengthen the effectiveness of those already engaged in secondary school teaching as they adapt the ideas they encounter as Teaching Assistants to their work at their own institutions.

Requirements of the Program

Students who are accepted as Teaching Assistants will:

1. Take a one semester graduate course entitled “Teaching History” for three (3) credits. This course will focus on pedagogy and will count toward the M.A.

2. The instructors of the “Teaching History” seminar, known as the “mentoring professors,” will supervise the students in the program.

3. During the first year, Teaching Assistants will take the seminar and will assist a professor in the department with his/her teaching (TA1) for a total of five hours per week for two semesters. They will receive a stipend for this work. Normally the course in which the TA will serve will be a lower division or a gened course, but may also be an upper division course.

4. Following the successful conclusion of the first year’s program, during the second year the student will attain the status of a TA2, will be given a section of a lower division history course to teach under the supervision of the mentoring professor, and will be paid accordingly.

5. The student will be expected to pursue his/her graduate studies in a normal manner and to complete the M.A. program within the current maximum time limit of five years.