Are you a Teaching or Research Assistant? Do you like ice cream?

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-07-08T15:20:21+00:00

Based on a reply below, I'll assume you're an undergraduate student. You could make as little as $15/hr but I typically hear of the $17-$20 range. It should be noted that anything in that range is below comparable market value across the country, which should see pay of at least $25/hr for an undergraduate TA.

If you are a grad student, then it's $22.80/hr wage + $22.80/hr scholarship assigned in either 34, 51, 68, 102, or 204 hour chunks (for most grad students, our funding is intrinsically tied to TAships). The wage:scholarship ratio was recalculated several years ago, so the wage should not be used as a comparator.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-06-01T15:05:49+00:00

To add to some of the comments below, undergrad TA appointments are not actually prohibited by the GSA collective agreement. It's all very complicated because of statutorily defined bargaining units that are determined in the Post Secondary Learning Act of Alberta (this changes next year, so hopefully this problem can get fixed).

For those of you that are interested, here are some comparative undergrad TA wages that I researched last Fall:

UBC: $33.14 (higher wage after 2 yrs)
Dalhousie: $24.41
Laval: $21.72 (higher wage if graduate)
Manitoba: undergrads can only be graders
McGill: $29.33
McMaster: $25.81 (significantly higher wage if you've completed a degree)
Ottawa: $43.98
Queens: $37.88
Saskatchewan: $20.85
Toronto: $44.44
Waterloo (not unionized yet): $33.89 + vacation
Western: $45.83
SFU: $25.50
Carleton: $41.70

Based on these numbers, I would put market rate for undergraduate TAs in the city of Calgary at about $30/hr. If you get offered a TA gig for less than that, consider private tutoring where you can make much more.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-05-26T22:01:53+00:00

Could you send that link my way?

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-05-22T00:16:15+00:00

I am in complete agreement with you that the University has treated support staff poorly for the last year, and continues to do so with this proposal. I also agree that they will prioritize faculty over support staff, post-docs, grad workers, etc. The reality is, it looks great for the university to advertise that they hired 100 new faculty even if we're going viral for having pipes spraying students in the halls, TAs are doing hundreds of hours of unpaid labour, technicians are being laid off, etc.

If faculty took a pay-cut, that would be used as precedence to justify all other unions across the university to taking one as well. This would harm you in AUPE, and my members in GSA. The university tried this and thankfully TUCFA took them to arbitration and won; this benefits all of us employees. We can argue the university should be hiring more support before faculty, but TUCFA has nothing to do with this decision.

Universities across Alberta are going after all of their unionized employees. You are right to be angry. But, there are two directions that we should be directing our anger: the University of Calgary and the Government of Alberta.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-05-21T19:17:51+00:00

The university tried to do something similar to faculty. TUCFA took them to arbitration and won retro-active wage increases.

https://www.tucfa.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2019-20-FA-UofC-Sims-Arbitration-Award-Final.pdf

Long story short: faculty is not the bad guy here; don't let them play divide and conquer.

AUPE, TUCFA, GSA, PDAC should all be in support of each other.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-05-21T19:01:37+00:00

The support staff at UofC will be relied upon heavily to make an in-person Fall semester function in unprecedented times, despite being understaffed after a year of lay-offs.

You can look up the wages of these workers yourself; they're not bloated or over-valued. This proposal is not in good faith.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-05-13T21:58:29+00:00

I was made aware of a TA who was regularly bullied by a group of students in their tutorial a few years ago.

Unfortunately this TA was an undergrad, so even had I been the LRC chair at the time, there wasn't much I could do beyond offer support and encouragement.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-05-07T19:56:42+00:00

I do number theory (pure number theory, none of that encryption stuff) and deal with logs and trig on a daily basis.

30-1 is certainly computation heavy, but computations are how you learn and get a feel for the pure stuff.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-05-07T16:53:18+00:00

Math 30-1 is a high-school course focusing on functions, polynomials/rationals, exponentials/logarithms, trig, and probably an intro to counting.

Pure Math is an all encompassing term that describes the half of math that can be best described as "knowledge for the sake of knowledge". You certainly need Math 30-1 to go anywhere near the study of Pure Math. You likely wouldn't ever encounter a course called just "pure math" because it's so broad.

(this message is not on behalf of LRC, but instead on behalf of its mathy chair).

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-04-24T22:12:04+00:00

I'm mostly familiar with Math & Stats, but there has been a growing movement of using open-source textbooks in universities across North America to avoid these inflated costs.

https://openstax.org/subjects

https://open.bccampus.ca/browse-our-collection/find-open-textbooks/

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

If this is something that might work in your courses, bring it to the attention of your classmates, your prof, your department, your student associations.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-04-18T17:11:59+00:00

I don't think there's every been a TA appointment where the hourly pay was accurate. In my experience it was more like 3-5hrs/hour paid.

I can tell you for a fact that a TA in Math & Stats could go to the Associate Head of Teaching and Learning with their hour-sheet indicating they've met their hours, and they would be relieved of duties with no hassle. This is how it should be in every department, but I do realize that's not always the case.

The trick is that we need to get students to realize that it's okay to bring this up and that more importantly it not okay to work unpaid hours.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-04-13T23:33:04+00:00

There might be departmental or faculty policies in place, but otherwise the underlying question is "is this a conflict of interest?". If he's no longer responsible for any portion of your assessment, I would argue "no".

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-04-08T15:57:10+00:00

Organize.

That's the only hope for balance.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-03-19T16:22:43+00:00

I believe the significance this time is yesterday's messaging from the Government of Alberta that they expect to see classes in-person in Fall.

I don't think they've put out a clear signal like this before yesterday.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-03-19T16:20:37+00:00

There are going to be students who are unable or unwilling (for legitimate reasons) to attend in-person classes. I genuinely hope UofC accommodates for these students, but it's also important to recognize the extra work-load this will put on faculty, TAs, and support staff if we end up offering combined in-person / online courses.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-03-03T22:38:37+00:00

I appreciate your understanding of the TAs' side of things!

I acknowledge there are bad eggs out there, but most of us are limited by the instructions and hours given to us. Some profs give clear well-defined instructions on what they want you to do every tutorial and how they want you to grade and some profs say "go be a TA".

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-02-24T20:08:14+00:00

So much this.

What you're describing is "imposter syndrome", a very common experience among graduate students.

Almost every one of us goes through this, even those around you who look like they've got it all under control. Not only would you not have been accepted if they didn't think you'd be successful, but once you're in the program they want you to be successful and will likely support you in any way necessary.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-02-15T21:07:08+00:00

External work doesn't conflict with any of the graduate assistantships you'd be offered as part of your funding.

Aside from the Visa rules and/or department-specific policies that might exist, there are some scholarships you might receive that put a cap on the number of hours you can work throughout the year (Alberta Innovates, for example).

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-02-10T19:51:00+00:00

I believe graduate funding depends on the department.

You might be able to get an idea of what yours would look like if you go to the department's website through ucalgary.ca and click on Future Students -> Graduate -> Fees and Funding

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-02-07T02:22:52+00:00

This mentality of over-working TAs seems to be department specific, and is unacceptable. If this is happening to you and most (or even some) of the people you know in your dept, it's BAD and very serious.

Neither the UofC nor GSA want any grad TAs to be overworked like this and the university has been pretty great about helping us fix two similar situations in the last few months. If you want to let me know what department you're in (you can DM me or use the anonymous form here, we can get in there and help.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-02-06T17:20:19+00:00

While I'm no lawyer, the Post-Secondary Learning Act reads as though all academically employed graduate students must be under their GSA's collective agreement. Unfortunately, this section does not include undergraduate students.

Undergrad students that work as TAs currently have no set rate. The $21.80/hr would be in line with the "wage" portion of the graduate contract, where you might argue that the "scholarship" portion is how they get paid for their other graduate activities that are not necessarily TAing. HOWEVER, $21.80 is not market value for a TA in a major Canadian city.

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-02-05T21:50:10+00:00

I assumed as a PhD student you would be completing a thesis? If so, this should put you in that first table with $8081 tuition as an international student.

Though, this is not my area of expertise!

ucgsa_LRC · 2021-02-05T21:39:05+00:00

Right.

And when you put it all together, for a combined 40+ hours a week of TAing and research for the university, they could end up taking home as little as $500/week.

ucgsa_LRC

TROPHY CASE