ACADEMIC ASSISTANTS (AAs, formerly TAGA) 

The Dean's Office allocates AA budgets to each department/school annually. Chairs and Directors manage the distribution of these funds for faculty members. Based on the faculty member's budget, they determine the number of AAs, the hours assigned to each, and the duties they will perform and the hours per duty they will complete. For vacation pay and benefits estimates, please refer to the Estimate Benefit Rates page.

The AA hiring process is managed through eHire. For questions, contact Nancy Amaral, Manager Academic Administration, at namaral@torontomu.ca. Postings are made by faculty and course (e.g., ITM100 and ITM500 for Professor Jonathan Swift). Students should apply via Toronto Metropolitan's Careers site for AA positions.  Students should scroll down to the student section of the page and choose Graduate Assistant, Teaching Assistant, Lab Monitor and Exam Invigilator Opportunities.  Then choose "I am an internal candidate who works at TMU" if they are currently working at TMU or "I am an external candidate" if they do not currently an active TMU employee.

The CUPE Unit 3 Collective Agreement requires all AA positions to be posted in eHire, and faculty must wait for the posting to close before extending any offers. 

First Week: Vacancies are posted for 5 working days

After First Week: Vacancies are posted for 3 working days

The following documents are designed to assist faculty, academic department chairs, and school directors with budgeting, recruitment, and hiring processes for AAs, along with other guidelines for their administration and supervision:

1. Ted Rogers School Academic Assistants Administrative Checklist for Faculty

2. Ted Rogers School AA Hiring & Administrative Processes - A Guide for Faculty - Winter 2025 - NEW!

3. Ted Rogers School AA Hiring & Administrative Processes- A Guide for Faculty, Chairs & Directors

4. Ted Rogers School AA eHire Guide for Recruiters

5. AA Posting Do's & Don'ts

6. Priority of Appointments outlines the order of hiring according to the academic degree of the student. (Link to Priority of Appointments will be added here once approved by VPFA) 

7. Ted Rogers School AA Ratings Sheet (Download and open in Excel before making changes as sheet will not function properly in Google Sheets)

8. AA Posting Details Form (To edit, faculty should make a copy in their drive or download in excel and send to their DA) 

9. AA Performance Evaluation Form 

10. Workload Confirmation Form

11. TMU Compensation Estimator - NEW!

12. Academic Assistant (AA) Contract Hours FAQs    NEW! As of December 2024

Contract Hours Audit Report:

The Contract Hours Audit Report in eHR allows managers and alternate approvers to track hourly employee timesheets against contracted hours. Run biweekly, it provides key details such as employee and supervisor information, contract dates, hourly rates, total contract amounts, approved and submitted hours, job codes, and account distribution codes. 

As of Fall 2022: AA performance evaluations being conducted is now at the discretion of the supervising instructor or at the request of the assistant. They can do so by filling out the AA Performance Evaluation Form. Faculty must send the evaluation to their DA who will then forward the original to Nancy Amaral, Manager of Administration. 

Process:

ARTICLE 15 EMPLOYEE EVALUATION (15.01)

1.  The University and the Union agree on the importance of feedback on Assistant performance to the development of Assistants as members of the academic community. Supervising Instructors will endeavour to provide meaningful feedback to Assistants during their appointments.

2. The Supervising Instructor will meet with the employee prior to or at the midway point of each term of the employee’s appointment in order to provide verbal feedback to the employee regarding the employee’s performance of their duties, at which time the parties can discuss any concerns that they may have regarding the appointment.

3. The employee’s Supervising Instructor shall complete a performance evaluation of the employee in accordance with the Performance Evaluation Form (attached as Appendix A, to the Agreement) at the discretion of the Supervising Instructor or at the request of the Assistant. This evaluation shall be discussed with the employee and a copy will be sent to the Union. The signature of the Assistants on the evaluation form does not denote her/his agreement with its content, but does indicate that the Assistants has seen, discussed and understood the evaluation.  Any concerns regarding the performance evaluation may be directed to the Department/School Chair/Director and should the Assistants provide any documentation in response to the evaluation, that documentation shall be attached to the evaluation form and placed in the Assistant’s file.

4. The University will continue to provide employees of the bargaining unit with electronic performance evaluation forms where possible. This will be done by posting a PDF fillable form on the University’s web site.

If an AA decides to resign for any reason, please process the Job Termination transaction in eAppoint once you have received their written resignation via email. The resignation should be forwarded to the eAppoint validator through Google Drive prior to approving the Job Termination transaction. For any other termination-related matters, please reach out to Nancy Amaral at namaral@torontomuca and Teresa Sarno, the HR representative for the Ted Rogers School at teresa.sarno@torontomu.ca. 

Invigilator Hiring

If DAs/GPAs are hiring new Invigilators they need to be vetted by Ben Price as per our regular process.  DAs/GPAs are to tag Ben in the current academic year's AA/Invigilator Tracker.  Once invigilators are approved DAs/GPAs may hire those individuals again if they have applied to invigilator postings.  

As always DAs and GPAs are to ensure that invigilators are provided with the Exam guide and information as per TMU's Exam page.

Assessments for Invigilators

Faculty must complete a performance evaluation for invigilators if the faculty member supervising the invigilator determines that the invigilator’s performance was not acceptable. They can do so by filling out the Performance Evaluation Invigilator Form.