The Department of Mathematics employs about 120 graduate students in mathematics as teaching assistants. An assistant's duties include teaching elementary courses or assisting in recitation sections. Normally, an assistant will have no more than five classroom contact hours per week when averaged over fall and spring semesters. The Department estimates that teaching combined with lecture preparation, paper grading, and student consultations takes about twenty hours per week. Teaching assistants are granted a nine credit per semester tuition waiver for fall and spring semesters and a four credit waiver for summer.
Teaching assistants pay tuition at the in-state rate for credits beyond the first nine.
In addition, registration fees are waived and assistants are automatically enrolled in an health insurance plan, the premium of which is paid by the University. Promotion from level 1 to level 2 is automatic with either a master's degree in mathematics or completion of two semesters at MSU as a teaching assistant in the Department of Mathematics and is done at the end of the appropriate semester. Promotion to Senior level is at the discretion of the department and is granted upon completion of all qualifying examinations, the comprehensive examination, the language requirement and the seminar requirement but is only done at the start of the academic year. If the 15th falls on a Saturday or Sunday, checks arrive the Friday before. Quarter-time assistantships are awarded occasionally.