International Teaching Assistants

Many departments offer teaching assistantships to qualified, enrolled graduate students. International applicants are eligible for these assistantships. Since teaching assistantships involve instruction, students who are awarded a teaching assistantship and whose native language is not English are required to demonstrate oral English proficiency. Students may do this either by passing the Test of Spoken English administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) before their arrival on campus and at their own expense or by passing the SPEAK test upon arrival on campus at no cost to them. A score of 50 or above is required to pass the TSE or SPEAK test. Information about the ETS may be obtained online at www.toefl.org or by writing to: TOEFL Services, Educational Testing Service, P.O. Box 6151, Princeton, NJ 08541-6151.

If the teaching assistantship responsibilities have already begun, the test result will have no bearing on the funding for the duration of that appointment. Students who do not pass the test are assigned responsibilities corresponding to their level of proficiency in spoken English and asked to enroll, at no cost to them, in the spoken English Communication Instruction classes offered by the Graduate School.

This requirement may be waived upon the Graduate Program Director’s request for students in the following categories: a. students who have taken and passed a test with similar purpose at another U.S. university; b. students who have an undergraduate degree from a U.S university; or c. students whose entire education has been in the United Kingdom, Ireland, English-speaking Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Commonwealth Caribbean, or the United States.