IUPUI TA Orientation

• New and current IUPUI graduate students with first-time teaching responsibilities during the fall, spring, or summer semesters of the current academic year are encouraged to attend the in-person TA Orientation and complete the Canvas TA Orientation course.
  • Teaching responsibilities can include being primary instructors, recitation leaders, lab instructors, or graders.
  • Note: Some departments require first-time TAs to attend the orientation, complete the Canvas course, or both.
• Any undergraduate who has a teaching assistantship is also welcome to attend the in-person orientation, sign up for the Canvas course, or both.

Registration requires using your IU username and password through the CAS login system. Please have Two-Step Login (Duo) set up for your IU account to successfully login to the CAS system and access the registration page. 

The TA Orientation is offered during the start of the current academic year. The session is held on the Thursday before the fall semester classes begin. Note: Academic year starts in the fall semester and ends with the summer semester.

The in-person session for 2023 will be held on Thursday, August 17, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Campus Center.

Graduate students expecting to be first-time TAs in the fall, spring, or summer semester of the current academic year are encouraged to attend the TA Orientation. If the TA Orientation is mandatory in your department, please check with your program coordinator to confirm if you need to attend it. If you are unsure about your role, please contact the organizers to determine which breakout session is best suited for you. 

PowerPoint presentations and recordings of select sessions from the TA Orientation will be made available in the Canvas course after the event; however, the entire event is not recorded.

Note: Graduate students who miss the TA Orientation will have to discuss next steps with their respective departments. Apart from providing online resources from the TA Orientation, the CTL does not conduct make-up orientations.

A post-event email will sent to all attendees after the in-person TA Orientation event. This post-event email can be submitted as proof of attendance to program coordinators in departments that require mandatory attendance of the in-person orientation.

In addition, once you have completed the Canvas course requirements, you will receive a completion certificate.

To verify that you have finished the entire TA Orientation requirements, you should provide both the post-event email and your Canvas completion certificate.

We do not offer a TA Orientation during the spring or summer semesters. Graduate students anticipating to be first-time TAs later in the year should attend the TA Orientation in the prior fall.

For more information, contact:

Jessica Alexander, Ph.D.
Instructional Consultant
IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning
alexjess@iu.edu
Office: 317-278-0585

Kimmaree Murday, Ph.D.
Principal Digital Learning Consultant
IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning
kmurday@iu.edu
Office: 317-278-3650

IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning
thectl@iupui.edu
Office: 317-274-1300

The CTL's Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Teaching Development program provides ongoing support for graduate students and postdocs to continue developing their teaching skills.

• We offer fall and spring workshops and webinars on various general and discipline-specific teaching topics.

• CTL consultants are also available for one-on-one or group consultations to discuss specific teaching challenges and concerns in face-to-face and online classrooms.

• Graduate students interested in future faculty positions are encouraged to pursue the Emerging Scholars of College Instruction and the CIRTL at IUPUI programs to build strong teaching portfolios.