Department of Statistics Data Science Discovery Teaching Assistantship

Description, Responsibilities, and Qualifications

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) is partnering with the Department of Statistics (STAT) to offer an interdisciplinary opportunity for exceptional LAS Ph.D. students to join as a 50% Data Science Teaching Assistant (TA) in our cross-disciplinary introductory Data Science courses. This opportunity is designed to:

(1): expand instructional knowledge in Data Science tools and techniques across the college of LAS, (2): allow TAs to build connections with students by leading lab sections that provide students exposure to diverse applications of Data Science, and (3): deepen the existing culture of teaching collaboration between units.

This opportunity is only open to students currently enrolled in a Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS) graduate (Ph.D. ) program.

TA Responsibilities: This position is a 50% TA position (20 hours /week) supporting STAT/CS/IS 107 or STAT 207. 

TAs will…

• Lead several weekly lab sections building a collaborative, small-group environment for students to learn introductory data science skills.
• Hold office hours to help students who have any questions about data science content.
• Assist in completing and reviewing the weekly lab notebook before each lab section.
• Grade student lab notebooks after each lab section and returned graded feedback to students.
• Grade and provide feedback on course-wide projects.

Knowledge Requirements: This course teaches introductory statistics and Python programming for data science. Applicants should be very comfortable with:

• Python
  • Specifically, pandas, DataFrame manipulation
• Introductory Statistics
  • Specifically experimental design, descriptive statistics, inference, regression, probability, and random variables
• Experience with git (preferred but not required)
• Model selection, data wrangling, machine learning (preferred but not required)

TAs should have previous introductory programming coursework or previous Python experience. They should also have taken at least one introductory statistics course and feel confident teaching basic statistical and programming concepts.

For more information about the courses, see the following websites:

• STAT/CS/IS 107: https://discovery.cs.illinois.edu/
• STAT 207: https://exploration.stat.illinois.edu/

English Proficiency Requirements for International Students

International students interested in this position must have official test results demonstrating their spoken English proficiency. Accepted tests include the TOEFL, IELTS, or OEAI.