Report of the Graduate and Professional Educational Policy Committee on the Training and Support of TAs

I. Introduction

We and the University Senate received in the fall of 2000 an undergraduate report on the training, supervision, and mentoring of teaching assistants (TAs). That report listed three general areas of concern: that Rutgers had too few teaching assistants, that training programs to prepare teaching assistants for classroom teaching were not extensive enough, and that not all international teaching assistants had sufficient English-language skills to teach as effectively as they might. All three concerns have received our attention. We were also struck by how often Part-Time Lecturers (PTLs) were doing the same work as teaching assistants, and while we did not try to come up with a comprehensive plan for the training of PTLs, many of our recommendations were designed to address concerns that cover both sets of teachers. In studying the training, supervision, and mentoring of teaching assistants, we interviewed faculty members in about a dozen New Brunswick departments about TA use and training, talked to undergraduates about their experiences in recitations and labs, and discussed with Kay Lynch and Michael Wherrity of the ESL program the language skills classes for international graduate students. We also talked with Michael Beals in FAS and Harvey Waterman and Ziva Galili in the Graduate School-New Brunswick. We met with two focus groups drawn from the teaching assistants themselves. Finally, we consulted a 1991 Graduate School report on the "Allocation of Teaching Assistanships" (which, given the limited additions to TA resources is not as out-of-date as one might hope it were), the 1999 report of the Executive Committee of the University Senate on the "Balance of Full-time and Part-time Faculty Teaching at Rutgers University;" and the 1999 report of the TA Liaison Committee, "Recommendations for TA Training/Support."

II. Overview of Inquiries

We undertook our inquiries with the assumptions that departments and programs made use of TAs in different ways and that any improvements in TA training would have to be primarily department-specific and the responsibility of the departments themselves. We also assumed that some improvements could be carried out without additional resources, while others, vital to teaching and scholarship at the University, would require additional funding. Finally, we assumed that most departments already were training TAs to teach, so that the undergraduate perception that there was a serious problem meant that existing training was not always adequate.

a. Resources. Even the most casual overview of the use of teaching assistants highlights how badly funding is need for the appointment of additional teaching assistants. Where recitation and laboratory sections exist, classes are often too large; in other departments and programs, large classes can not be sectioned because of inadequate resources.

The problem is more than one of adding more teachers. Relative to other AAU universities, Rutgers relies far too heavily on PTLs and does not have enough teaching assistants. The figures we had from 1997 (and they have not changed much since then) indicate that roughly equal numbers of TAs and PTLs teach in any given semester, with TAs responsible for about a three-twentieths of the teaching in New Brunswick (measured in instructional units) and PTLs about one quarter (faculty are responsible for about half). While the ratio of PTLs to TAs at Rutgers is approximately one-to-one, at other public AAUs, that ratio is approximately one-to-six. PTLs, of course, are often among our best teachers; some have long-term relationships with the University and are deeply committed to teaching. Others are advanced graduate students with substantial teaching experience who accept a PTL position while searching for permanent employment. But the heavy reliance of PTLs almost assures that quality of instruction, especially in large courses, will be uneven, and undermines the concept that training in research and teaching are mutually supportive goals in the University's graduate program.

Funding needs, however, are not restricted to increasing the number of teaching assistantships. While the University has taken a leadership role in providing out-of-classroom help for students, especially with the establishment of the Learning Resource Centers, a similar effort directed toward the classroom itself is clearly necessary. Such an effort is especially vital as first-year students experience Rutgers more often than not through large classes which are or ought to be sectioned. Rutgers needs not a one-time infusion of new lines, but a long- term plan to increment steadily the number of teaching assistantships. Any solution will require the cooperation among and resources from departments, deans, and the University administration. If the first priority is additional teaching assistant positions, it is also important that resources be made available to create supervisory teaching assistant positions ("head TA's). The creation of such staff positions, not as mere course administrators, but to train and supervise teaching assistants in multi-sectioned, large lecture classes may provide the most immediate and effective way of mentoring teaching by teaching assistants. Finally, additional funding for the ESL program also seems necessary is we expect it to provide more systematic and comprehensive language training for international students. Rutgers lags far behind other AAU institutions in the training it requires students to receive before they enter the classroom. None of these recommendations is inexpensive, and each, of course, must be weighed against other University priorities.

b. Training. The current training of teaching assistants begins with the Teaching Assistant Project (TAP) of the Graduate School-New Brunswick. TAP sponsors a one-day orientation session for all new teaching assistants before the beginning of the fall semester, an additional orientation session for international teaching assistants, and then various workshops during the year on specific teaching topics. TAP also surveys department efforts to train and supervise teaching assistants. TAP assists teaching assistants who want to videotape their classes and has developed a peer observation program to provide additional feedback to teaching assistants about their teaching. PTLs as well as TAs are involved in most of this activity.

TAP efforts have had a significant impact and deserve additional support, but the primary responsibility for training and mentoring teaching assistants should and does rest with departments/programs. All departments have some form of teaching assistant training, but there is no generic model of TA use or training (and there probably should not be). Even distinctions such as humanities/sciences do not necessarily prove useful in describing the programs we surveyed. That said, there are some distinctions among programs worth keeping in mind. A handful of programs -- Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, English, Math, Physics, Psychology, and Electrical Engineering -- employ 45-90 teaching assistants each semester; most use considerably less. Some programs use teaching assistants to teach their own courses; most do not. Some programs do not assign first-year graduate students to teaching assistants; most can not afford this luxury. In some programs, fifty per cent of more of the teaching assistants are international students. In some programs, graduate students typically serve as teaching assistants only one or two years, consider such assignments "second-class" work (relative to working in a laboratory or on a grant), and are preparing for a career that will not include teaching. Improving teaching in such programs is a significantly different problem than in a program where most teaching assistants teach three or four years and are preparing for positions as college professors.

Most departments have a general training program for their teaching assistants. These programs range from two or three informal sessions for new teaching assistants to teaching methodology courses that students take for credit. A few programs have no general training program (but require that faculty members supervise the teaching assistants assigned to their courses). Most programs also have mechanisms for reviewing the actual classroom teaching of their teaching assistants; such mechanisms range, however, from very informal to quite formal and systematic. Few of these programs involve the graduate students themselves (as anything other than the people observed). Where ESL concerns exist, not all departments coordinate their assignments and training as effectively with ESL as they might. Some programs have assigned the primary responsibility for training teaching assistants to a particular departmental officer, a few have staff members (non-faculty) hired specifically to supervise and train teaching assistants. No program has addressed the teaching of PTLs with the same level of concern that exists for the teaching of faculty and teaching assistants, although from a classroom perspective, the distinction between teaching assistants and PTLs is often meaningless.

c. English-as-a Second-Language (ESL): The Program in American Language Studies and English as a Second Language runs two sets of programs. All international graduate students who score lower than 575 on the TOFEL examination take an English language examination and then may be required to register for up to 8 "E" credits of writing and speech classes. Second, all international teaching assistants (ITAs), regardless of TOFEL scores, take a thirty-minute oral interview examination (including some content specific to their discipline). Work- study students are often used in these interviews as well as ESL staff. The exam is videotaped, and the students are coded "0" (exempt from language classes), "1" (may teach but must take language skills classes), or "2" (may not teach, and must take language skills and phonology). Students coded "1" or "2" are retested and recoded at the end of each semester. Each ITA class enrolls approximately 10-12 students, and perhaps 120 students are tested and enrolled each fall.

Discussions with Kay Lynch and Michael Wherrity, who are responsible for most of the ITA testing and training, suggested a number of ways to improve training--most of which require greater cooperation between individual departments and the ESL Program: Well before the start of the semester, all departments and/or Grad Admission should give ESL a list of new international TAs/PTLs they plan to hire and who need testing. Testing should start at least one week before orientation and the University needs to consider testing (phone interviews or video tapes) students before they arrive. Targeting the students who score "1"'s on the ESL test, and providing additional summer training for them might be one way to start. ESL training should also be integrated into department-specific teacher orientations. ESL staff can hold workshops with lab supervisors/those leading TA-training to help these individuals learn how to improve language skills within a particular discipline. Departmental TA training might then routinely have sessions in which a more realistic classroom situations are modeled, with role playing, as appropriate. PTLs should be included in all such programs, and undergraduates, drawn from the areas being tested, might be asked to help (both in ESL review and department training).

Not only should GPD/departments encourage students to take ESL seriously, but ESL should be rigorous in its standards in coding students "1". For TA's who are still coded "2" after entire academic year, a summer session should be offered to allow them to continue ESL studies (covered by TA tuition waver). Departments should also require that only English be spoken in labs, during TA training, and in weekly meetings of instructors.

If coordination between departments and ESL improves, and more testing and training occurs, ESL will need additional staff resources -- these are absolutely essential if the University hopes to make meaningful improvements in classroom teaching.

III. Recommendations

The recommendations that follow assume that there is no one model of training and supervision that will work for every department. We also assume that while some oversight or coordination is need from Deans, the Graduate School (and TAP), and the Teaching Excellence Centers, the primary responsibility for improving training rests in the departments and programs themselves.

a. The University needs a long-term, on-going addition of new teaching assistantship positions, not a one-time addition of a few new lines. Put differently, it needs a plan to increase teaching resources. Such a plan should match dollars from the University (and, more modestly, from the deans) with responsibility in the departments and programs to create (or continue) comprehensive training and mentoring programs for their teaching assistants. A realistic goal would be to add twenty new teaching assistantships in New Brunswick annually (thirty University-wide) for five years, or one hundred additional teaching assistantships. The cost of such additions is substantial in the neighborhood of a permanent addition to the budget of $500,000 a year for five years. This cost will be slightly offset by a reduction in the number of PTLs.

Discussion: It should be emphasized that not all departments/programs "need" additional teaching assistantships. A few, well-endowed programs, might argue that they already have all the graduate students, given the job market and the number of graduate courses they offer, that they can handle. But, in general, the need is enormous. Few other steps the University could take would more clearly and cost effectively further both the scholarly and teaching goals of Rutgers. The more serious concern, in a University with many spending priorities, is that teaching assistants cost considerably more than PTLs, and if the only goal were to increase the number of teachers, it would be more cost effective to hire more PTLs a point made to us by several of the people with whom we discussed the problem. To the committee it seems unlikely that we will improve the quality of teaching or the reputation of the University with such a choice.

b. Each department (or program) should have one or two department officials (for example, vice chairs) with the specific responsibility for assuring the teaching assistants and par-time lecturers are trained and supervised in their teaching. That official should oversee a training program for both new and continuing teaching assistants. Such a program might include orientation sessions, period workshops, a course on teaching in the discipline, in-class visitations, and presentations (when appropriate) by ESL staff. The Graduate School (through TAP) and/or the appropriate dean should review departmental training and mentoring programs and report periodically to the Graduate Faculty on efforts made to improve teaching by teaching assistants. Where there are problems, the addition of new teaching assistantship positions should be made contingent on correcting those problems.

Second, the Teaching Excellence Center should explore ways to institute mid-semester, standardized teaching evaluations for all multi-sectioned classes, that will allow problems to be detected and corrected. Rather than the "evaluations" currently used at semester's end, these forms should be diagnostic and capable of rapid processing. The University should provide adequate funding for this new initiative.

Discussion: Explicit designation of such responsibilities to particular, elected department officers may require changes in department bylaws. We recommend this and hope it will occasion further discussion of the problem at the department level. That said, in most of our informal discussions it was evident that the single most important element in on-going mentoring of graduate students as teachers was the commitment of at least three or four faculty members in a particular department to this task. Where there are problems, changing department "culture" is an important part of the solution. We also noted that the efforts of TAP have had there greatest effect in departments already committed to mentoring their teaching assistants. TAP can "preach to the converted," and to good effect, but it lacks the means to correct serious problems.

c. The University should provide immediate funding to extend ESL training. Initially, this extension should target first-year ITAs who score "1"'s on the ESL test (or can be anticipated to fall in this category. That is, beginning modestly, the University should try to provide additional training for those students who will enter the classroom their first semester but need additional language training. Such students need to be identified earlier and brought to campus earlier. This will be costly. To provide course work as well as room and board for 50 or 60 such students late each summer would probably cost $300,000 to $400,000. The details of such a program should be negotiated among the University, the Deans, and the ESL Program.

d. In departments which utilize large numbers of teaching assistants to teach multiple labs or recitations, FAS (or the appropriate dean) should be asked to consider the appointment of a staff person (or the funding of an advanced "head" teaching assistant) who could serve as course coordinator and teaching assistant trainer. Deans should encourage and solicit proposals for such positions. (In most cases, these positions can be created by adding responsibilities and salary dollars to existing positions, but again no one model fits all programs.)

e. Additional TA resources should be distributed with the understanding that first-year teaching assistants whose teaching and course works merit reappointment should teach for a second year during their career at Rutgers.

Discussion: one of the major problem in many grant-supported disciplines is that students rapidly move off teaching assistantships to research positions. Both their experience and the investment in their training is then lost. For many of the above proposals to have a significant impact, a two-year commitment (not necessarily consecutive) will have to become the norm. Several faculty members emphasized that teaching assistantships provide ITAs a job skill, that is, greater facility with language and with dealing with others, even if they do not plan to go into teaching.

Resolution

Be it resolved that the New Brunswick Faculty Council strongly supports, in principal, recommendations a and c above and refers them to the Budget and Planning Committee for advice on how they may be implemented.

Be it further resolved that the NBFC also supports the remaining recommendations above.