Aside from getting experience with teaching and research, graduate assistantships at Iowa State can provide students with income and other benefits.

About half of the graduate students at ISU are on assistantship, said Shelley Lott, classification officer in the Graduate College. This amounts to about 2,200 students.

“Anybody that’s got the funds together and is affiliated with the university” can offer assistantships to graduate students, Lott said. “Brenton Bank can’t have one. There has got to be some academic basis for the work—affiliated with the university in some way.”

There are three categories of graduate assistantship offered at ISU: teaching, research and administrative.

“[Administrative] assistantships are the catch-all for students who don’t fit into either of the other two,” Lott said. “Some of them work for financial aid. Some do computer work, and some do a lot of administrative work for the departments.”

Teaching assitantships (TA) have defined terms of appointment. They run four and a half months in the fall and spring semesters, Lott said.

Research assistantship (RA) terms are variable depending on the needs of who is offering them.

“Some of them may be a short term thing,” Lott said. “They may hire a student to work on a project for a year and when the project is done they won’t hire another graduate assistant, until at a later time when something else comes up. Some [RAs] are ongoing.”

Graduate students are not limited to assistantships in their own departments but may work on assistantships in other departments if they are qualified.

“A lot of assistantships are across departments,” Lott said. “Because a student could get an undergraduate degree in math, say, and then decide they are going to be a graduate student in computer science, they are certainly qualified to teach a Math 104 class or something like that.”

The office of Tom Thielen, vice-president for student affairs, offers a number of administrative assistantships.

“They hire students from everywhere,” Lott said. “They can be in recreation services, student support services, or financial aid.”

Assistantship stipends at ISU range from $875 to $1,700. The minimum will increase to $900 on July 1, 1996, Lott said.

“It’s a huge range, but some departments have to be very competitive with students. In other areas they have more students than they can handle, so the market tends to determine it.”

Graduate assistants are assessed tuition at resident rates, regardless of which state they claim residency. They also receive a scholarship for part of the remaining tuition (half tuition for half-time appointments and quarter tuition for quarter-time appointments).

Lott said many graduate assistants are not aware of some of the other benefits they have. They receive medical insurance for themselves that they can extend to their families.

“The new thing that was added last year was the prescription drug benefits,” Lott said. “A lot of students don’t even know they have this. Basically it is $2 for any prescription and $5 for any non-generic drugs.”

Spouses of graduate assistants are also assessed resident tuition, although they do not receive any scholarship.

“We don’t know who the spouses are automatically,” Lott said. “We have no clue, so they do have to notify the registrar’s office if they want that privilege. They have to verify a marriage, and as long as the person is a graduate assistant, then their spouse gets resident tuition too.”

Information on the benefits that graduate students get is included in the information sent to incoming graduate students, but “not everybody has time or wants to read all that stuff,” Lott said. “We like to mail everything to the departments, but when you get students who work for different places, it’s really tough.”

Lott said the Graduate Student Handbook is a good source of information for students, but not every graduate student has a copy. It can be obtained at no cost from the Graduate College office in 207 Beardshear.

“The hardest thing is for graduate students to learn where all the different assistantships are,” Lott said. “Dr. Thielen’s office has a brochure on anything to do with student affairs. There’s an application they fill out right with the brochure.

“A lot of [assistantships] are word-of-mouth and some are posted on bulletin boards. Sometimes departments will call a specific department and say, ‘We have a need for this kind of student. If you have anyone that still needs an assistantship, send them over to us.’ Some of them are just being in the right place at the right time,” Lott said.

The new Graduate Student Handbook will be accessible on the Internet prior to fall semester 1996 ().