TL;DR: The summer school we are organizing is looking for TAs. Please forward this to your students as well as any departmental mailing lists.
Are you passionate about teaching? Or about increasing diversity within TCS? If so, we need your help!
The committee for advancement of theoretical computer science (CATCS) is organizing an online summer course that will take place on May 31 till June 4, 2021. New horizons in theoretical computer science is a week-long online summer school which will expose undergraduates to exciting research areas in the area of theoretical computer science and its applications. The school will contain several mini-courses from top researchers in the field. We particularly encourage participants from groups that are currently under-represented in TCS. See https://boazbk.github.io/tcs-summerschool/ for more details.
We are looking for TAs to help run the school.
TAs will have the following responsibilities:
• Plan team building and ice breaking activities and social events for the summer school
• Lead small groups during the week
• Monitor questions in chat during lectures
• Work with one of the instructors to prepare one homework
• Grade homework
• Provide mentorship to students
• Possibly assist with reviewing applications and other technical/admin aspects of running the school
The time commitment will be ~20 hours during the week of May 31-June 4; ~5-10 hours prior to that week; and ~2-3 hours following that week. We are hoping to pay an amount of $500 to each TA (please note that international students will need a CPT for this).
To apply for a TA position, please fill in the application form at https://forms.gle/QCxLn8R81Ga4JQLH8 by April 15, 2021. Please also have a faculty advisor send a short recommendation to summer-school-admin@boazbarak.org. Please ask them to use the subject “TA recommendation for <<Your Name>>”.
Course organizers: Boaz Barak (Harvard), Shuchi Chawla (UT Austin), Madhur Tulsiani (TTI-Chicago)
Current list of confirmed instructors: Antonio Blanca (Penn State University), Ashia Wilson (MIT), Jelani Nelson (UC Berkeley), Nicole Immorlica (Microsoft Research), Yael Kalai (Microsoft research).
Please email summer-school-admin@boazbarak.org with any questions.
500/33 < 15.16
Our budget is limited, and indeed we debated if to call it pay or honorarium or to even ask for volunteers and not pay anything. None of the instructors or organizers are paid. Moreover the teaching assistants are not “PhD level” and will likely be mostly graduate or undergraduate students.
Nevertheless indeed I am sure that teaching assistants that take this position will not be doing it for the pay, but it was still important to try to at least partially compensate them for their time to the extent we can afford
When is the application due? I want to make sure I have time to get my reference in order.
April 15 though if reference comes a few days after that’s OK too – reference need not be a full letter – just a short email will do