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Teaching (Funded)
Administrative (Funded & Non-Funded)
Fellowships, Grants
Summer Funding
Research
It is wise to amass the most varied teaching experience that you can
while you are a graduate student. In the English Department, you are
eligible to apply to teach introductory
writing, intermediate
writing,
and join the staff of the Writing
Center. Where appropriate, you may also want to apply to teach in
the introductory literature program or in English as a Second Language
. Teaching options also are available in Integrated Liberal Studies,
Women’s Studies, Afro-American Studies and other programs, again
depending on your academic background and professional plans. If you
are interested in issues of writing and technology, you may apply to
be a Technology
Fellow and offer technology-based versions of your writing course.
Be creative. Interesting and varied opportunities are around.
It is a good idea to keep a teaching file in which you keep course syllabi
and assignments you have written, statements of teaching philosophy if
you have written them, copies of faculty class observations, written
evaluations by students, and other materials related to your teaching
In some cases, you may want to have one of your classes videotaped, a
service that is offered free by the Video
Resource Center. These materials will be helpful to you as you make
applications for the more competitive TA positions or teaching awards.
Sometimes colleges and universities request a teaching portfolio as part
of the application for a job.
If you are enjoying unusual success in the classroom and it is documented
by faculty observation reports and student evaluations, you should bring
these accomplishments to the attention of your mentor, the area advisor,
or the director of the program in which you are teaching. Each year,
faculty are asked to nominate teaching assistants for various teaching
awards (department and university); if you think you should be nominated,
be sure to bring it to somebody’s attention.
Teaching Assignments
Each semester you will receive a form from the Associate’s Chair
office asking you to prioritize your teaching preferences for the coming
semester. You should ask for what you want. Then, it is a good idea to
visit the director of the desired program during his or her office hours
to let them know about your interest and your qualifications for their
program. Ordinarily, assignments to the Writing Center are made only
after you have taught writing for at least one semester.
Renumeration
If you are a beginning graduate student with a teaching assistantship,
you will most likely teach one section of English 100 each semester.
As of March 2005, pay is in the neighborhood of $9,680 per year, assuming
you have had one year of teaching experience. In addition to the salary,
you are eligible for health care and other benefits at no or low cost
(value ranges from $3,600 to $8,000, depending on family status), as
well as remission of tuition (value=$18,000). The total financial value
of the package is in the neighborhood of $31,000. All these figures are
current as of March 2005 and regularly change each year.
Each semester you will receive a form from the Associate’s Chair
office asking you to prioritize your teaching preferences for the coming
semester. You should ask for what you want. Then, it is a good idea to
visit the director of the desired program during his or her office hours
to let them know about your interest and your qualifications for their
program. Ordinarily, assignments to the Writing Center are made only
after you have taught writing for at least one semester.
Length of Appointment
Provided that students remain in good academic
standing in the Department and teaching or other assigned responsibilities
are performed well,
this Doctoral level support guarantee typically provides support
for a period
of three academic years, with a fourth year of support contingent
on both good performance and availability of funding.
Professional Opportunities in the Program
Graduate students in the Program in Composition & Rhetoric are
highly qualified to apply for many administrative and other apprentice-like
positions that are available in the English Department. Some of these
are paid positions and others are volunteer. These positions, which
range from assistant directorships in the first-year writing program
to writing-in-the disciplines, to the on-line writing center, the Technology
Fellows Program, coordinator of the CompRhet
Colloquium, or, when available, research project assistant. Familiarize
yourself with and apply for these opportunities, which provide valuable
experiences beyond the classroom.
Professional Activity in the Field
We urge you to join the National Council
of Teachers of English and the Conference
on College Composition and Communication, both of which offer
attractive graduate student membership fees. You also may want to
join the Rhetoric Society
of America or the American Educational
Research Association. You should routinely look at the major
journals in the field (for instance, College English, CCC, Rhetoric
Review, Written Communication, JAC, and others) and attend, if you
can, professional meetings such as CCCC. Within CCCC, there are
a number of special interest groups that cater to your interests,
including the Special Interest Group for Graduate Students or the
Coalition of Women Scholars in Rhetoric. The Research Network Forum,
which meets at CCCC, is a great place to discuss research in progress
with both beginning and experienced researchers as well as to get
to know journal editors.
As you gain experience, we urge you to submit proposals for presentations
at conferences and to develop an article or two from your dissertation.
These extra steps help you to make the intellectual transition from
student to professional scholar and can’t hurt when it is time
to go on the job market. Your mentor can be a help in preparing conference
proposals. We also try to hold proposal-writing workshops at least
once a year.
The Graduate School makes available some modest sums of money for
travel to professional conferences to give papers.
Going on the Job Market
The MLA Job List is published in
early October and is the start of the “job market season.” When
you go on the job market, you will have access, through the Graduate
Division, to the MLA on-line job list. Hard copies of the job lists
also are available for perusal in the Graduate Division. There is
a smaller CCCC job service that is also available to you. Most preliminary
interviews for jobs are held at the annual meeting of the Modern Language
Association in late December.
The decision to go on the job market ideally should be made in the
spring prior to the job-search season. You should be in good contact
with the department’s Placement Coordinator, an individual who
is in charge of helping all PhD students in their job search. Beginning
sometimes in the previous spring and continuing through the next fall,
the Department holds vita-writing workshops, mock interviews, and
other informational meetings that you should attend. You will need
to compile a dossier, including your vita, writing sample, and letters
of recommendation to keep on hand in the Graduate Division. The Graduate
Division mails out dossiers when they are requested by schools to
which you have applied.
In the year you are looking for a job, you should be prepared to
devote a good deal of time between September and February to the search.
Letters of application are sent out in October and November, MLA interviews
are held in December, and on-campus interviews occur generally in
January and February. Your dissertation director is the best guide
to the timing of your job search and you should remain in good contact
with your director throughout the process. In terms of timing, the
further along on your dissertation the better. When there is product,
your recommenders are able to write specifically about your project
and its progress. You also may be quizzed hard about your project–and
when it will be completed–during MLA interviews and need to
be able to talk about it lucidly and definitively. And the job search
will drain time away from your work on the dissertation. However,
it is true that the job market for candidates in rhetoric and composition
remains robust, especially in comparison to jobs in literature, and
so it is normal to apply for jobs while the dissertation is in progress.
Under construction.
Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Humanities
IWCA (International Writing Centers Association) Graduate Research Grant
ChLA (Children's Literature Association) Graduate Student Research Grant
WCTE (Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English) Robert C. Pooley Research Grant
AAUW (American Association of University Women) Fellowships
Spencer Fellowship
AAUW Fellowship
ACLS Fellowship
Ford Fellowship
UW Dissertator Fellowship
DeKarman Fellowship
Vilas Travel Grant
Library and Information Resources Fellowship
AERA Fellowship
International Reading Association Grants
Fellowship for people studying higher ed
FLAS Fellowships for foreign language and area studies (See area studies office)
Woodrow Wilson Women's Studies
National Endowment for the Humanities
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Under construction.
FLAS to study a language (Deadline to apply is February 11)
Global Studies is administering a program of graduate fellowships for the study of less commonly taught languages and area studies. Funded by the US Department of Education, the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships seek to improve language fluency and international awareness in the United States.
FLAS fellowships cover tuition and provide a stipend for either one academic year or a summer.
ESL program in HC White (teaching a two month course)
PEOPLE program (teaching a three-week course) 
The Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE Program), in partnership with Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, and Waukesha public schools and the Bad River, Ho-Chunk, Lac Courte Oreilles, Lac Du Flambeau, and Menominee Indian Nations, is currently recruiting graduate students with a background in secondary literacy education, English at the secondary or college level, or a closely related field of expertise for our Summer 2008 Writing Program, June 23-July 11, 2008.
PEOPLE is a college enrichment program for middle and high school students of color and students from low-income families who are interested in attending the UW-Madison and who maintain an academic GPA of 2.75 in their core classes. Participants receive academic advising and tutoring throughout the year and also attend the summer residential program. After successful completion of four years in the program (seven for Madison students who begin after sixth grade), PEOPLE students who are accepted to the UW-Madison receive five-year tuition scholarships.
Graduate student instructors will be asked to teach a writing-intensive course for rising ninth or tenth grade public school students. Each classroom will host between ten and fifteen students. Writing workshops will be held each morning from 10:15 a.m. until 11:45 a.m., Monday through Friday for the entire three weeks (except for July 4).
Each graduate student will be paid a stipend of $2,000. Graduate student instructors will not, however, receive tuition remission or health care benefits for summer or fall terms. Participation also involves attending two planning meetings in the spring (one in Madison and one in Milwaukee), as well as several meetings outside of class during the three weeks (times and dates to be determined).
The application form is attached. The deadline for submitting applications is February 22, 2008. For more information, please contact:
Ross Collin, 444D Teacher Education Building, 225 N. Mills, Madison, WI 53706; (608)263-4621; recollin [at] wisc [dot] edu.
Because so much research in CompRhet involves observing, interviewing,
and sometimes testing human beings, faculty and students alike need
to be knowledgeable about guidelines affecting such research. Because
of heightened scrutiny of universities that receive federal funding,
the University of Wisconsin has developed rather elaborate oversight
procedures for anyone doing research involving human subjects. According
to university guidelines, students who conduct research in order to
fulfill course requirements are not required to seek approval from
a Human Subjects Committee (although gaining informed consent is always
wise). However, if you ever want to try to publish this research–or
think you might–then you must have prior approval. We recommend
in most cases, if you are planning research with human subjects as
part of your graduate coursework, that you become certified through
the tutorial and submit your plans and consent forms to the Review
Board. You should allow at least a month for the review.
The Office
for Human Research Protections now requests that all investigators
at UW-Madison who are conducting research on human subjects have
training in the form of an on-line tutorial. The training module
takes about 30 minutes to complete.
According to university guidelines, all projects involving human
subjects must be reviewed by a Human Subjects Committee, such as the
one in the College of Letters and Science (263-2320). The Human Subjects
Committee meets about once a month and proposals are reviewed as they
are received. Approval is granted for one year and then must be renewed
annually. Application forms are available online or
from Donna Janke, L&S Human Subjects Committee, 212 South Hall.
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