The Department of Cultural Anthropology regards departmental service, and the mentorship that comes with it, as an important part of graduate education. As a condition of their fellowship, students must provide service to the department during the academic year, except while conducting dissertation field research. Departmental service may be in the form of a Teaching Assistantship, a Graduate Assistantship, or, in some cases for post-field students, Graduate Instructorships, as decided by the Director of Graduate Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Time Commitments for Teaching Assistants & Graduate Assistants
Teaching Assistant and Graduate Assistant duties should take up no more than 10 hours a week on average during the semester. For Teaching Assistants, time attending class and doing class readings count as part of these hours. In some cases, the distribution of these hours may vary throughout the semester. If supervising faculty members expect their TAs and GAs to do substantially fewer than 10 hours some weeks and substantially more than 10 in others, they should discuss this with the student early in the semester. All TAs and GAs are expected to be in residence at Duke until the end of undergraduate finals unless other arrangements are made with their supervising faculty.
Service Assignments
The Director of Graduate Studies, in consultation with the Director of Undergraduate Studies, makes departmental service assignments for each semester. The DGS will endeavor to do so with as much advance warning as possible so that students can arrange the rest of their schedule accordingly.
Expectations for Teaching Assistants and Supervising Faculty
The work of Teaching Assistants is crucial for sustaining the quality of undergraduate course offerings in the department. TAs are expected to attend every class meeting and to complete all readings. At the same time, faculty supervisors bear responsibility for mentoring their teaching assistants in the process of becoming good teachers. Each faculty member teaching a course with TAs is expected to meet regularly with them during the semester. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss grading and other practical matters as well as broader issues of teaching philosophy and strategy. Whenever possible, a TA will give a lecture and/or lead discussion at least one time during the semester. As part of faculty mentorship, the faculty member must attend the class led by the student and offer constructive feedback.
Expectations for Graduate Assistants and Supervising Faculty
Graduate Assistants work closely with faculty to assist them with their research projects or other related academic activities. The specific duties of a Graduate Assistant are determined by supervising Faculty, and generally include, but are not limited to, locating academic sources, creating bibliographies, annotating articles and other sources, translation, editing and proofreading, and other assistance in article and manuscript preparation. Supervising faculty are expected to provide training in these tasks where appropriate, as well as academic mentorship more broadly.
Complaints
If complaints about departmental service should arise on the part of either a graduate student or faculty member, they will be heard by the DGS and the chair of the department.