The Department also appoints graduate students as pre-doctoral instructors. These appointees teach their own classes. To be eligible, students must have passed the PhD General Exam and achieved doctoral candidacy. The number of pre-doctoral instructors varies from quarter to quarter according to the teaching needs of the Department and the availability of departmental funds. Since these appointments are driven by the needs of the curriculum, there is not always an even distribution of positions among those students who request the opportunity to teach their own course.
Pre-doctoral Instructors hold half-time appointments (20 hours per week) which provide a monthly stipend, health insurance, a waiver of the operating fee portion of tuition (i.e., tuition minus student fees), and a waiver of the technology fee. Recipients are required to pay student fees of approximately $400 per quarter. All Pre-doctoral Lecturers are considered Academic Student Employees and, as such, are represented by UW/UAW.
The Department's criteria for the appointment of its Teaching Assistants are based on the University of Washington's Executive Order 28 on graduate student appointments. Generally, the University requires that applicants demonstrate high achievement in their fields of graduate study and the potential for excellence in teaching, research, or other activities related to the appointment.
To fund as many graduate students as possible and to ensure that appointees proceed expeditiously toward the completion of their degrees, the Department of History normally does not allow Teaching Assistant Appointees to hold concurrently any other graduate student service appointments (TA/RA/SA) or comparable fellowships during the tenure of their awards.