Grad Students Teach and Learn

by Sarah Cooper on 12 Sep 2007

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According to graduate student Tyson Knudsen, "the difference between a graduate student and a professor is that we are all scared to death, we just try really hard not to show it."

This semester Knudsen is one of the 267 graduate student teaching assistants at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is also one of a new generation of university professors, says Marsha Read, assistant dean of the graduate school.

"As we look at what we see from a national perspective we expect a fair number of retirements in the academic community," says Read. "The academy is graying."

According to Read these student teachers are becoming the next generation of professors who will also be setting the academic bar for current and incoming undergraduate students.

But for teaching at the university graduate students receive a $1,400 dollar stipend that pays for the usual expenses. Also, 80 percent of tuition is covered and the school provides health insurance.

"Not every grad school gives the same incentives as (UNR) does," says Knudsen. "This school is wonderful. There are advantages to being a grad student and teaching here."

As a graduate student teacher in Spanish, Knudsen is eligible for in state tuition, despite his out of state status from Utah. On campus Knudsen can be seen among other students wearing his powder blue-collared shirt and dark-wash jeans. Knudsen is not only teaching undergraduate students but also learning right along with them.

"It gives the grad student a great opportunity to sharpen their teaching skills," says Knudsen. "It can help them to decide that this is what I want to do, or this is not what I want to do. It also gives them great experience to put on their resume."

But some undergraduates are ambivalent on the subject. Take Richard Cao, a 22-year-old biology major, for instance.

"It depends on the class of course," says Cao. "I wouldn't really trust upper division classes to be taught by graduate students."

Cao specifically recalls a physics course he took nearly three years ago which was taught by a graduate student.

"Towards the beginning she was giving horrible grades to everyone-it didn't seem to matter she was giving bad grades to everyone," says Cao ."Everyone almost had one out of ten and that was for everyone."
Cao said the students in his class eventually spoke with the professor who intervened on the way she was handling the class. She eased up on her strict grading and the class was better for it.

"One thing that she was lacking was balance and understanding because we did speak to her and it didn't seem like she was understanding of what we wanted," says Cao.

But that doesn't mean to say Cao has completely turned off by the experience.

"To be honest a lot of the graduate students that I had they really knew what they were teaching," says Cao.

The graduate student growth is both academic and statistical says Graduate School Coordinator Michael Peters. Peters says that he hopes that the number of graduate student teachers will continue to rise. Each year the undergraduate students entering the university every year dictate the number of classes taught by graduate students. The university claims on their Web site that 79 percent of the full-time faculty hold the highest degrees attainable in their respective fields.

"Sometimes the grad students are much closer to the curriculum than the professors who don't usually teach those courses," says Peters. "The [graduate student] teachers are closer to the undergrad experience because they were just there a few years earlier."

One of Cao's professors would wake up the class with Chuck Norris jokes, recalls Cao.

"It provides them with classroom experience," says Peters. "It encourages them to gain mastery of their subject matter."

Peters says the graduate school is continually petitioning the legislature for an increase in graduate student teachers. The number of compensated graduate student teachers is determined by the legislature's pocketbook.

"We have been asking to have additional teaching assistants to offer more sections of different courses," says Peters.

Read is also an advocate for grad student growth.

"What they usually want to do is become a professor," says Read. "Many times they don't have any formal training as far as the teaching side. The ability to have an experience of teaching adds to their marketability."

Read acknowledges that concerns do exist nationally about graduate student teachers.

Some universities take a different approach to training future professors. Some universities operate Preparing Future Professors Programs but UNR does not. Rather than diving into teaching, these students follow a professor as he or she disseminates academic knowledge.

The scared-to-death grad student teacher is not something to be taken lightly. The university responds by requiring teaching assistants to take courses through the Excellence in Teaching program. The program offers classes on academic honesty, the university's plagiarism policy as well as accent reduction classes for foreign graduate students.

But Cao is still skeptical. "I just don't want to risk having a T.A. that doesn't have any experience teaching and screwing the whole damn thing up."

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