Backtalk Permitted in this Classroom

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article detailing my experiences as a graduate teaching assistant. I exposed the lack of standards or consistency in training graduate students to teaching undergraduates—which they do in large numbers in the University of North Carolina system.

The article, “How to Create Terrible Professors,” touched a nerve among current professors, disenchanted students, and even the interim dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill, where I am a graduate student. Most of those who responded agreed that the training for future professors is poor. On the other hand, some thought that “sinking or swimming” is perhaps as good as we are going to get in the preparation of new faculty.

The first five commentators think that something is amiss with the preparation of teachers. But Dean Carney of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Arts and Sciences defended the current state of preparation. My response follows his.

  • Thomas Bidgood, chair of the Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Colorado Christian University wrote, “Enjoyed your article and it brought back memories. As a graduate teaching assistant I had absolutely no training or orientation prior to teaching my first class…and I’ve always felt bad for those first students. But I made it, and my list of “do’s” and “don’ts” was heavy on the don’ts, culled from a long list of professors that I had who were terrible teachers. I tried to figure out what it was the good profs did and add those to my do list. The amazing thing, in retrospect, is that the do list is pretty short and the don’t list is very long.

    “After a 25-year career in industry I returned to the university and discovered that nothing had changed. Now I was a new professor and the university provided absolutely no orientation or training…so it was back to the do list. Even with all the new technology available, the do list still works.”

  • Patricia Cerrito, a professor of mathematics at the University of Louisville, wrote, “I agree with much of what you say in your article. However, there is also another side. Students have frequently abdicated their responsibilities, especially the responsibility for study. I probably see that more than most because I teach mathematics. Students want to do the absolute minimum to get a passing grade. Students cannot learn mathematics studying 1 hour per week or less.”
  • Thomas Hannen, a professor of engineering at the University of Dayton, wrote, “I have taught engineering for several years, part-time (I am a full-time engineer for the Air Force). I started teaching engineering labs as a junior, and went on to grad school for my M.S. Never took an education course. I took speech, drama, and business as options. When you can stand up in front of several hundred generals, decision makers, and people who may get shot down if they do not understand your speech, talking to 20-year-old students is not that bad. But it can be, if you are not observant. Being a college professor is fun, but serious. In my case, experience outweighed my lack of a Ph.D.”
  • Dave Taggart, a public school teacher in Murray County, Georgia, wrote, “On the whole, probably the ‘sink or swim’ method is only modestly less efficient than the countless hours spent by future public school teachers in ‘educational methods’ classes.

    “When I medically retired from the Army, the Veterans’ Administration sent me back to college to get my teacher certification (to rehabilitate me into a useful citizen). Needing money, I would cut classes for the chance to earn $50 by substitute teaching. My ‘advisor’ called me in, told me to stop that, and said that I would learn more in her class than substituting. I never listened to another word she said—I learned more about teaching in the first 90 minutes of my first day substitute teaching than I did in semesters of educational methods classes.”

  • Beth Mash wrote about her experiences as a student, “If the school administration had any idea how these professors can have a negative impact on students’ later contributions and on their recommendations to friends and family members regarding university attendance, they would make a bigger effort to rein in some of their worst faculty members.”

But not every one agreed that the preparation of graduate students to be teachers of undergraduates is seriously lacking. Bruce Carney, Carolina’s interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, defended teacher training at UNC-CH, particularly in political science, the department where I was a teaching assistant:

I am happy to report that our training for graduate students in political science and many other departments has advanced significantly since the writer finished her master’s degree here in December 2005.

For example, since fall 2006, political science grad students have been required to take a Fall Teaching Seminar (three two-hour sessions taught by a senior distinguished faculty member and an advanced graduate student) and to observe at least two 50-minute recitation sessions taught by current teaching assistants (TAs). Students are also required to enroll in the graduate teaching assistant instruction provided by UNC’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

Before receiving the Ph.D. degree in political science, graduate students also must progress from leading a discussion section for one course, to serving as a teaching assistant in one or more courses, to finally teaching their own course. The department confers annual awards for the best graduate teaching assistants.

We constantly strive to improve all of our academic programs, including graduate student instruction. I was gratified to learn this week of a grad student in our department of religious studies who transferred to UNC from Harvard because we pay more attention to preparing graduate students to teach.

I can assure you that we will be discussing graduate student training at our department chairs’ retreat next semester and we will encourage our colleagues to adopt the best practices used in economics, religious studies and other departments. We expect all of our graduate students in the College to excel in both teaching and research, the same goal we set for our faculty.

My reaction to Dean Carney’s description is mixed. I am glad to hear that the political science department has higher standards now than when I was there. Although they are small, the recent changes may help new graduate teaching assistants in those first few semesters when I felt rather lost.

But my article addressed a larger problem. The standards of the political science department are relatively high (although far from perfect), as I pointed out in my original article.

Dean Carney fails to address the fundamental problem: there are no university-wide standards for training to become professors. Without such standards, graduate students in some departments (such as the Slavic language department, as I mentioned in my article) are woefully unprepared to teach undergraduates. It appears that the graduate school “encourages” departments to adopt best practices but in my view it is not enough.

Dean Carney writes that “we will be discussing graduate student training at our department chairs’ retreat next semester and we will encourage our colleagues to adopt the best practices used in economics, religious studies and other departments.” Encouragement is nice, but much more needs to be done if undergraduates are to receive the kind of education that their parents and the public expect.