When graduate assistants step into the role of teaching, they often have to deal with a lack of experience.
The experience varies by department and individual, said Kat Greene, a rhetoric and composition graduate assistant who teaches sections of a 100-level English class.
“The English department is unique in that graduate students who get teaching assistantships have a mentoring process,” she said.
Greene said they take a practicum class and receive mentoring from a veteran professor.
“As far as the English department goes, we get a whole semester to be prepared,” she said.
Greene has taught for three years and has seen both sides of being an instructor.
“I think one of the great things about being a graduate assistant is being both a student and a teacher [at the same time],” she said. “I think it humanizes you, too.”
Kayleigh Bilbrey, a junior psychology and criminal justice major, had a graduate assistant as a teacher.
“I didn’t like it as much,” she said. “They didn’t seem as qualified.”
Samantha Long, a sophomore telecommunications major, also had a graduate assistant for one of her classes. Both she and Bilbrey said the graduate assistants were easier to talk to “because they’re more on your level,” Long said.
“[My graduate assistant] was not what I would expect of a teacher,” she said. “He didn’t carry himself like a teacher.”
Thomas Lauer, a biology professor, works closely with the graduate students in his department, including some who assist him in his classes.
“Graduate students are relatively inexperienced, but also have the support of individual professors,” he said. “If they’re teaching a class or a lab, we would make sure that student has all the instruction needed for that class and how to handle students and tests and all that stuff that go on in that setting.”
Part of making sure the graduate assistants are prepared to teach in the biology department is a weekly meeting to check up on their progress.
“We don’t just let them go off and ignore them,” Lauer said. “We closely monitor everything that’s going on in the classroom.”
