Untracked teaching assistants

This is so funny. You want better education but then you don’t want the University to do things to reduce costs. Actually, TA is a regularity in every college of the US, even at Harvard and the Ivy League. So, considering the state appropriations for MSU and that MSU has the lowest appropriations per students in the Big Ten I consider that our education is good. TA’s don’t take part of very much when you look at it. Maybe you will see a TA in your general requirements and helping professors, but professors dominate teaching by more than 85%. Now, if you only want to be able to say that your professor teaches an 10 student class just for the sake of it, which is what most students want, then you can shut up because the majority of students don’t engage with professors in office hours, during class or after it.

But again, considering our tuition and the general financial condition of MSU regarding public appropriations I would say that MSU is a great value and a great education.

Its on you to use the resources and take the opportunities available at MSU for your development.

“They know your name, and, in an increasing number of MSU classes, they control your education.”

Absolutely laughable. Graduate TAs are under generally under the thumb and scrutinous eyes of the professor and the department. All major decisions such as the curriculum and grading policies are decided by upper-level teaching staff without any input from TAs.

If you really want to be afraid of someone with free rein, why don’t you ask the university to clamp down on professors and administrators? Or are they really so much more trustworthy than a graduate student?

The University is too afraid to clamp down on ethnic nepotism. Ethnic nepotism is when our wonderful international professors will hire in mainly TAs from their home countries. If these persons are incompetent and cannot adequately speak English, then the Ombudsman is powerless to stop them because anyone who complains is called a racist or insular.

Re: student. Excellent post. I’ve also noticed how students never pay attention to the syllabus and see those things called office hours for professors.

Tenure-track professors at MSU (and all research universities) have no motivation to be good teachers — their careers will sink or soar depending on their research, not teaching.

TAs have a lot of motivation to be good teachers — in order to earn competitive fellowships and secure good recommendations.

Who would you rather be taught by, especially in a lower-level undergrad course where only a minimal amount of expertise is required of the instructor?

Ethnic nationalism? Really? Find me 100 qualified native-born Americans who want to do a Ph.D. in math at MSU. Good luck.

I agree with AYS. That’s a very essential point in all of this.

Why didn’t you contact Franny Howes for a comment? She was your go-to person for a long time and she’s a teaching assistant.

1. “Human biology junior Matthew Bush didn’t know his Physics 231 course would be taught by first-year TA Savanna Shaw when he registered…”

2. “Bush said. ‘The professor for this class is very impersonal and (Shaw is) willing to answer a question at the drop of a hat.’”

Quote 1 says that a TA is teaching the course, quote 2 says a professor is teaching the course. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

All physics courses are taught by faculty. Physics TAs teach lab sections, hold office hours, and grade papers.

It would not have been difficult to get that right.

I also agree with AYS. Also the TAs have to pass an English test in order to be considered as a TA and if students just pay attention and have a bit of patience, the TAs aren’t bad at all.

I have to agree that I’ve had a lot of graduate students teaching my courses and for the most part I really like them. And with some courses, common sense tells you that having graduate students teach the courses allows the university to have more sections, with smaller numbers of students, for a much cheaper cost.
I’m taking SPN 101 this year and the person teaching the class is a grad student. It sucks because the person teaching the class has no say in the syllabus, so even things that make no sense cannot be changed. However, if the university only allowed professors to teach this course, I know I would have had a more limited option of days and times to take it, and would probably have had a MUCH larger class, which with a language class is not a good thing.

I think there needs to be a good balance.

One bad thing I have come across in having some higher level courses taught by graduate students (several 300-level courses in my major were taught by graduate students) makes it much harder to get a hold of that person a year later for letters of recommendation if you are applying to grad school, because by then they may have graduated and moved away, which is less likely to happen with professors who work here as a career than people here temporarily for school.

TA: Most students will refer to the person teaching a course as the “professor” accurate or not.

TA- He said “the professor is very impersonal and (Shaw is) willing to answer a question at the drop of a hat.” Who knows how the SN asked this question, but I would imagine they had to use the parentheses there because they asked the question in an awkward way and had to rework it a bit. Shaw=ready to answer questions, prof=impersonal.

I agree with Erin, though…as a TA, I get emails addressed to “Professor…” all the time.

My students were recently asking me about my faculty of record, and whether or not that person really DOES anything. Indeed, he does. All of the TAs in my department work from the same syllabus, get evaluated regularly, meet on a regular basis to discuss problems, concerns and teaching strategies, and we can consult with our FoR whenever we need to.

I feel the teaching offered by my department’s TAs is quite good, and am really glad for the opportunity to teach while learning more about my field.

PS – J, what a ridiculous comment. Please cease in spreading your ignorance further.

The English test is a joke. There are loads of qualified Americans, don’t be so ignorant. The problem is Americans are greedy and would rather use their mathematical talents making money as an actuary. Also, many Americans simply don’t feel comfortable in such a multi-cultural math department.

I definately have to agree with the TA’s english ability being an issue. I’ve been graduated two years now and have a much easier time talking directly to suppliers in korea, who have little oportunity to practice using their english, than I did my fluid dynamics TA’s who ran the lab. Passing a test doesn’t really mean anything. I understand (verbally and written) alot of french but my speaking it is pretty much limited to je ne comprend pa and oui.

“Graduate School Dean Karen Klomparens said various professional training sessions and constant communication with a TA’s faculty mentor minimize the need for a central tracking system of the university’s TAs.”

This might be how it’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t go that way in every department. I was approached about 2 month before the start of the semester to teach a class as a TA. The department chair had me in his office, thanked me for accepting, then told me to see the department secretary to get help to order the textbooks. I was not informed who my faculty of record was (or that I was even supposed to have a faculty of record). I was not given a syllabus (I got some syllabi from previous semesters from the secretary). I was not given any direction at all.

The “professional training sessions” were a joke. The TA training session that I attended really didn’t address much at all about teaching a class.

I attempted to contact two different faculty members who had previously taught the course to get direction and input. Both of them had various reasons that they couldn’t meet with me.

I was tossed into the deep end with no help whatsoever from the department. And the class suffered for it. I felt really bad for the students. I was trying my best, but I had never taught a class before and had no guidance.

I would have loved to have had biweekly (at least) meetings with a faculty mentor, help developing the syllabus and selecting the textbook, and somebody to review my exams before I gave them. I asked for help from the department and got none.

Clearly, the university DOES need to monitor these issues, because not all departments are policing themselves, and the students are suffering for it.

I transfered from Wayne State to MSU. I have to say my education at Wayne State was much better than MSU, considering I had actual professors teaching the course. I had many instances at MSU where TAs would not be adequate in their understanding of the subject matter. So much so that I would submit my “incorrect” test answers to the actual prof and have C’s turned into A’s. In one case, my TA was disciplined due to a lack of understanding of the subject matter after reviewing one of my tests. TAs, in my experience, had no more knowledge of the subject than a undergraduate that did the required readings.

I hate to say this, but many of the foreign TA struggle with their English skills as well.

Seems like a very mixed experience with TAs at MSU. (My own has been fantastic.) Which leads to the main thrust of the article — MSU doesn’t do a very good job tracking them. Don’t give me garbage about it being too much work for professors to submit to a central database whether they will be teaching a section or if they will be having a TA do it. If people are going to spend serious money on their undergraduate education they deserve to know the qualifications of the person who will be instructing them.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I have had many courses taught by TAs and I think it many ways the quality of instruction was actually better — I just think transparency is always something to strive for!

usually the people that post on articles are the ones that are affected negatively by the topic on the article.

Ms. Guenther labels the fact that TAs are supervised at the Departmental level (as opposed to at the University level) “Organizational Confusion”. The information about who teaches what course, and how the course is structured, is easily obtainable from the Department which offers the course.

The information is available, just not from the Graduate School and not through “the system of courses” (whatever that is). The only one who is confused about the University’s organizational structure is Ms. Guenther.

The TAs at MSU are tracked, just not tracked in the way that the author of this “article” thinks they should be. This is a non-issue.

The reason MSU spews the line about being ‘too difficult’ to centralize information is that they simply don’t want to collect it. If students, grad assistants, or faculty were to find out exactly how their department and its operations compare to other departments, they would also uncover the great inequities that exist in how each is administered. MSU Admin would tell you that their laissez-faire handling of contentious issues (note: except for funding) allows for flexibility in administrating a wide range of academic areas, but the simple fact is that knowledge is power. If the information were to be collected, it would become available for a FOIA request and MSU would have to release the information. So as not to be forced into releasing potentially damning information, they simply refuse to collect it.

I was disheartened to see that Ms. Guenther took my comments out of context and used them to bolster her (clearly) predetermined argument about the nature of undergraduate education and the efficacy of graduate teaching assistants.

This reveals more to me about The State News than it does about the topic.

“Ethnic Nationalism”? Absolutely and on a vast number of levels. I once was a PhD track math grad student, product of 4 years of undergrad American education. The TA crop of incoming “first year” students were at least half foreign and suspiciously older. I discovered that most of these had lied and already had PhD’s from their home countries, but could earn more as a TA in the USA than as a professor in their home countries. I, and the rest of the Americans could not compete and were gone after the first year (when the large numbers to teach high-school-college math were no longer needed.)

There is this perception, that all large research schools use TAs extensively… That is incorrect… Most large state schools are working to reduce class size and increase faculty teaching classes. Having done my undergrad at MSU (07) and now at Purdue as a grad student I noticed that all but a handfull of classes are taught by faculty. Even the ones that are not taught by faculty, at the minimum they are taught by PhD canidates. Purdue is also a large research school and they can have faculty teach almost all classes. TAs (me being one of them) are primarly used for recitations, labs or graders. Also faculty at Purdue are under intense pressure to be good teachers given their student evaluations are tied to raises, bonuses and teaching awards (which there is a cash reward) So if Purdue can do it, why can’t MSU do it? Problem at MSU we all just assume TAs are overused at all large state schools…so wrong, open your eyes people…

I wonder if this article’s author had a TA or a full prof for her journalism class. This piece is horrific.