This resource is a "living" document created and maintained by A&S graduate students enrolled in the Graduate Teaching Project (GTP), a zero-credit GRAD course designed to help students develop teaching skills. Each year watch for updates as each new GTP cohort continues to make improvements to these pages.
This online handbook replaces, as of August 2019, the old TA/TF Handbook with the goal that it will be more useful, relevant, and user-friendly and thus will better serve the needs of A&S graduate students who serve as teaching assistants and teaching fellows.
At William & Mary, a TA (teaching assistant) is a graduate student who assists an instructor by teaching sections of laboratories, grading papers, or in some other capacity. They are not instructors of record responsible for assigning final grades. A TF (teaching fellow) is a graduate student who is the instructor of record and responsible for assigning final grades. Only students who have passed their comprehensive exams and have met their program's definition of ABD (all but dissertation) and who are trained and supervised by the program responsible for the course or courses involved may be TFs. See the A&S Faculty Manual for more detail about these definitions.
The initial concept for this guide was developed by the first-ever cohort of GTP students in consultation with Sarah Glosson, Director of the Graduate Center; Sara Belmont, W&M Libraries Web Developer; and Jessica Ramey, Instruction and Research Librarian. Additional input was provided by faculty members Gene Roche, Danielle Dallaire, and Jennifer Rahn.
Pilot GTP Cohort, Spring 2019:
GTP Cohort, Spring 2020:
GTP Cohort, Fall 2021:
GTP Cohort, Fall 2022: