Experience as a graduate assistant can be viewed as an apprenticeship under the guidance of a mentor, or faculty supervisor. In most cases, the experience is instructive and positive. In some cases, however, a conflict may arise where a faculty supervisor may want to reassign or even, for due cause, dismiss the student from a position as a graduate teaching or research assistant. Many conflicts between a supervisor and a student can be prevented if the student is given a written description of responsibilities and receives regular supervision and evaluation. If conflicts become troublesome, however, the Graduate College encourages and supports all efforts toward resolution by informal means within the department, initiating at the supervisor-student level.
Policies already exist to deal with specific differences between faculty and students.
A student who has a complaint or grievance against a faculty member or a department has procedures available to resolve the conflict through the Graduate College Student Grievance Guidelines. The following describes the policy on mediation of conflicts when a supervisor perceives that a student is not fulfilling responsibilities as an assistant. A student is appointed to an assistantship usually for only one or two semesters at a time. If there is a conflict between a supervisor and an assistant that cannot be resolved by informal means, the most practicable solution may be to relieve the student from those responsibilities and to reassign the student to new responsibilities for the period of the assistantship. At the end of the period, the assistantship would not be renewed.