3.1.1 Guidelines for Instructors of Record for Lower Division Courses (numbered 1-99)

Historically, campus practice has been that a graduate student instructor (GSI) teaches under the supervision of a faculty member, and the faculty member is the instructor of record. Even in cases where the GSI creates and maintains records of student performance as a part of teaching duties, the faculty member remains the instructor of record.

COCI reaffirms this established precedent as part of official Committee approval procedure. In a lower division course, a graduate student may not be the instructor of record and may serve only as a GSI who teaches under the supervision of the instructor of record (i.e., the designated faculty member responsible for the course).

GSIs are not the same as graduate students who have been appointed as Acting Instructor-Graduate Students1 (AI-GS) in upper-division courses.

Notes

1“Acting Instructor-Graduate Student” is a specific academic title that refers to a graduate student who is “employed to render services as the instructor of record for a particular upper division course as approved by the Associate Dean of the Graduate Division and approved by the Committee on Courses” (per UC Berkeley Office of Human Resources, http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/labor/contracts/BX/job-opportunities(link is external)).