Graduate Teaching Assistantships in Schools of Music

College Majors Music Major
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<p>Would anybody here care to expound on their experience with a Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA) while attending school for a master's degree in performance? My son will be majoring in Voice Performance, so if you have particular experience as a voice major with a teaching assistantship and can comment, that'd be great! But I'd still be interested in hearing about GTAs as an instrumentalist, too.</p>

<p>(I'll phrase my question in the past-tense, but I'd love to hear about present-tense situations, too!)</p>

<p>I'd love to hear about what jobs you did, how many hours a week you worked, the positives and negatives of your experience, how you felt about the money you earned compared to the amount of work you did, and how your GTA experience played out in your post-graduate life. Am I right to assume that there are all sorts of inherent benefits to these jobs that come into play even after graduation?</p>

<p>I'd also be interested in hearing anything else you have to say about your experience that I haven't thought to ask! :)</p>

<p>Thank you in advance.</p>

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<p>Are there no music school TA’s who are willing to share their experiences as a TA?
:(</p>

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<p>Actual teaching assistant ships are not all that common in any performance medium for masters level students. Any teaching which gives college credit is more likely to go to doctoral student. Applied music lessons are too expensive to be offered to non music majors except in cases of extraordinary need for the voice type or instrument. Exceptions might be a voice class, but that too will likely be assigned to experienced doctoral student. Other kinds of duties might include assisting opera or choral program, music library, recital /concert attendance taking or stage management, assisting professor with special program/institute/research projects, helping area coordinator with application files. Any graduate assistant duties ought to have potential to enrich the education, experience, awareness and/or call upon specialized knowledge of someone broadly acquainted with the field, through the assistantship gifted with the opportunity to learn that much more about how things are and should be done. There are more potential duties than I can call to mind, but these are general ideas. It may also depend on the funding source. It the assistant ship is out of opera funds, private or institutional, then duties will be assigned by opera director. Ditto choral. Likewise there may be special funds established to support priorities of deceased or retired faculty member or alumni, and duties will likely support those missions and interests. </p>

<p>I suspect the lack of response speaks to the rarity of this kind of funding, i.e. GTA, at the masters level. For instrumentalists, however, this could be designation for participation in named chamber group, opera orchestra, collaborative pianist, etc.</p>

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<p>^Huh. I had no idea about any of that. I didn’t know they were rare-ish for master’s level students. I wasn’t sure about what duties they would entail, as a music student, or about how enriching any GTA duties would be – for the student’s present life and/or for his/her future life.</p>

<p>I kind of figured TA duties might include some sort of teaching, but I see your point – actual teaching duties would likely go to doctoral students. So, are doctoral student’s TA positions also called GTA’s? Or are they called something else? (DTA’s??)</p>

<p>I also had no idea that funding sources might vary, and that the sources could thus dictate the job. I just assumed that funding came from “the school of music,” period, or from the university as a whole.</p>

<p>So all of that is very interesting!</p>

<p>In the past few days, I’ve read about general TA jobs throughout other schools within a university – history, English, math, and science departments, for example. (I couldn’t find anything about music school TA positions.) It seems that the reviews are quite mixed!</p>

<p>Some people complain vehemently about how they’re being “used” and overworked. But often, from the handful of articles and blogs I’ve read, those “other department” TA’s are complaining about writing lesson plans, grading long writing assignments, and teaching massive classes of unwilling students without any real authority to set standards of behavior or grading policies. They do all the work; the real profs get all the credit. I can’t imagine that those complaints would translate readily to a school of music.</p>

<p>I also read about TA’s who love their jobs. They feel like they’re well-paid in a convenient workplace with consistent, reliable work and pay. They like working with the students, and they like working with the profs and staff. They feel like their TA duties are preparing them well for their current education and for their future careers. </p>

<p>I’m just guessing that a GTA job within a music school would be much more like the latter experience. And I was hoping to hear from some current GTA’s to confirm my theory! :slight_smile: But I didn’t realize that they were kind of uncommon amongst master’s level students! </p>

<p>Thank you so much for sharing your insight, lorelei! :)</p>

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<p>One music school within a university that I know of does use VP students as TAs and it turns into a real problem around “opera time” each semester. The students don’t have enough time to adequately prepare their roles while handling TA duties AND attending required classes for their Master’s. I think that could well be why such jobs are few and far between.</p>

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<p>^Really? That’s not good.</p>

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<p>It is semantics what an assistantship is called, whether it is GTA, RA (research assistant), TA, Fellowship (though that may be more of a scholarship that a grant involving duties). From what I have heard, Yale does have its Masters level students teaching undergraduate voice, but there is no undergraduate music major. There are some adjunct faculty members, too, who supervise and coordinate the assignments, work with upperclassmen. The graduate program is very selective and limited in enrollment. </p>

<p>If a professor has a grant from an outside funding agency, they can fund graduate assistantships from the grant. These are not common in music, more common in the sciences. The duties of the graduate student would be to work in fulfillment of the grant project. This is what is known as soft money in higher education. At most of the research school, a faculty member (not in the arts) is expected obtain outside money to fund even their own salary, and tenure is very difficult to obtain without that kind of funding. The grants pay for the graduate students, administrative help, etc. When you hear about a student applying for a PhD program, in the hard and social sciences, their admission will mostly be determined by the major professor, his/her needs, the match in research interests. This is yet another reason why the arts are so expensive for a school, not only the one-on-one teaching costs, but the lack of availability of outside funding. </p>

<p>Many music faculties choose not to have masters level students do applied music teaching because they do not know if they are actually qualified to teach lessons at a level that will be worthy of a student receiving academic credit. It is an issue of standards. A doctoral student will likely have been at the institution longer, have more experience, and may in fact have filled in for their major professor to help with younger, less advanced students. Some schools use a system where many lower-class (freshman and sophomores) students are shared between a major professor and an advanced graduate student. This works very well for everyone concerned, and the less experienced student has the advantage of the easier availability of the GTA, the experience of the major professor, the comraderie of the studio, and the opportunity to be a part of a bigger community within the music school. </p>

<p>Few schools would be concerned about the issue of time management for a graduate student in their funding decisions. They are expected to figure out how to do everything. Life in the fast lane! It definitely is a challenge for everyone during high performance season.</p>

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<p>My S will be a TA in his Masters program at a conservatory next year. He receives a bit more scholarship money and is expected to spend about 5 hours per week in his TA duties. This will involve coordinating activities for his teacher’s studio, teaching supplemental lessons for undergrad music majors, plus teaching undergrad non music majors. He is also required to participate in the “Conducting Orchestra” which may be required of all Masters students who receive merit aid (most if not all do) at this school. </p>

<p>TA opportunities vary from school to school. He has a friend who is graduating Indiana who had a TA fellowship as a Masters student in a percussion studio but it seems like the strings TA / GA positions go to Doctoral students there. At CIM they do not have TA fellowships, or so we were told.</p>

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<p>^Thank you for sharing your experience, slovesviola. Do you know of anybody with a 12-hour per week TA job? That seems like a lot of time, especially if music-school TA jobs are like non-music school TA jobs in that actual on-duty times often exceed “advertised” on-duty times for non-music TA’s.</p>

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<p>SimpleLife, I thought about your question after reading it yesterday, and, since no one has answered yet, I thought I’d tell you what I came up with. I added up in my head the hours my daughter has for teaching fellowships. She is still an undergrad, but she has fellowships at her school that are also open to grad students. </p>

<p>One is teaching on Saturday mornings at a prep program at her conservatory for gifted school-age music students-- private lessons, coaching, etc. The other is a fellowship to teach one afternoon a week at an urban school. Each of these teaching fellowships is about a 6-hour commitment, not including prep time. The urban school job has more significant prep time, and she has to coordinate and work with with the students’ regular teacher. She also has a performance fellowship, but it is not every week, and does not really require much outside time other than travel. She is able to get through 12+ hours of fellowship work with an undergrad load, which is more coursework than a master’s schedule (I think.) It’s not easy, and it requires some careful scheduling, but it’s doable.</p>

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<p>^Thank you, glassharmonica! I appreciate the specifics. That helps! :)</p>

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<p>My DD will be starting a Graduate Assistantship in Horn Performance this Fall. It is a full tuition waiver plus living stipend. The per week commitment is 10 hours. Her Horn Professor has told her the 10 hours will be spent in rehearsals with the school’s Graduate Woodwind Ensemble (approx 5 hours - her Assistantship is under the blanket of that performance group) with the remaining hours devoted to teaching Gen Ed Music Appreciation to non-major undergrads and teaching lessons to some students. Any hours she goes over the 10 hours will also be paid at an hourly rate. </p>

<p>Most of her undergrad friends are attending Graduate school on some sort of Assistantship. They range the gamut from partial tuition waiver to full tuition waiver to full waiver plus stipend. At the schools DD looked at it seemed the normal range of work hours was 10-15 per week (some had cumulative amounts such as 150 per semester).</p>

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<p>^Excellent. I’m so glad to hear about these. Thanks for posting!</p>