Subject: Resolution on Review of Teaching Assistant Training

Thank you very much for transmitting the Resolution on Review of Teaching Assistant Training, as approved by the University Senate at its meeting on February 23, 2001. By copy of this memorandum, I am sending the Resolution to Professor Ziva Galili, Vice Dean of The Graduate School, who is working with a Committee of faculty, staff, and undergraduate and graduate students on this issue. Professor Kathy Scott has been representing the Senate’s work to that Committee, and Professor Paul Clemens serves a parallel function regarding the work of the New Brunswick Faculty Council.

The Committee is scheduled to report its recommendations by the end of this semester, and is including in its deliberations concerns regarding all undergraduate instruction delivered by non-faculty, whether teaching assistants, part-time lecturers, or annuals. I understand that it is particularly focusing on the issues surrounding instruction provided by non-native speakers of English, especially in the scientific and mathematical fields. It is also deeply respectful, as is the Senate report, of the wisdom of acknowledging disciplinary differences in proposed improvements of teaching assistant training and TA-delivered instruction.

Even before the Committee makes its recommendations, however, many of the Senate’s resolutions can be implemented. First, with regard to your Executive Summary, I agree with the following:

• the training of teaching assistants must be discipline specific;
• departments must be accountable for the performance of teaching assistants;
• there must be greater departmental collaboration with, and participation in, the existing program offerings for international teaching assistants;
• programs to increase the cultural understanding of undergraduates should be enhanced.

• that every department or program charge one or two department or program officials with the specific responsibility of making sure that teaching assistants are trained and are supervised in their teaching;
• that every department be required to submit to the appropriate dean an annual report summarizing teaching evaluations for teaching assistants. When the evaluations warrant, the dean should ensure that the department takes the appropriate corrective action; and
• that each department be required to develop guidelines for its faculty who supervise teaching assistants.

• where possible and appropriate, ESL staff should meet with the department official in charge of supervising teaching assistants with the goal of expediting the testing of students, and ESL staff should be invited to participate in department training sessions; and
• when ESL tests international graduate students for language proficiency, an undergraduate student should always be part of the review committee.