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Number, role of GTAs expands with enrollment
by Donna Brown Special to the Kansan
When a graduating senior asked him to serve as a job reference, David Shulenburger, former associate dean of the School of Business and now associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, realized his program was in trouble. The dean had never had the student in a class. Even worse, none of the other faculty at the school had either.
This occurred in 1985. During the next three years, other graduating seniors approached Shulenburger with the same request. They came to him, he said, because they had gone through entire programs without having a regular faculty member for instruction. The students had taken all of their business courses from graduate teaching assistants and they needed more impressive titles on their resumes.
"In 1895, about 63 percent of our (business school) undergraduate instruction was done by GTAs." Shulenburger said last semester. "It has improved somewhat since then. Now it's around 55 percent."
The departmental profiles, published by the office of institutional planning, show that in Fall 1987, 24.4 percent of KU courses were taught by GTAs, an increase from 20.9 percent in 1982.
from 1924. In 1985, when the University in 1967 full-time faculty members, it hired 753 half-time GTAs. This year, the University employs 929 full-time faculty members and 969 half-time GTAs.
10m Rawson, vice chancellor of administration and finance, said the increase in GTAs was because of an increase in the ratio of students to faculty. Enrollment adjustment funds, created by an increase in enrollment and sometimes used to hire new faculty, are not available until two years after the increase.
Until then, it is less expensive to hire a GTA. For one-fourth the cost, a GTA will teach as many courses as a regular faculty member.
GTAs at the upper level
One of the ways research universities support graduate students is through teaching assistantships. Traditionally, GTAs have taught lower level courses.
At KU, however, not only freshmen and sophomores are taught by GTAs.
and sophomores are taught by GTAs. Graduate students in the School of Business, Shulenburger said, last semester taught Problems in General Management 498 and both sections of Legal Aspects of Business 602.
"I'm most concerned about 498," Shulenburger said. "It's supposed to pull together and synthesize important material, and it demands a lot of knowledge and experience of the instructor. We've been fortunate by being able to put our most mature graduate students in it, but it's not quite the same."
A pamphlet distributed at last summer's orientation by the office of university relations explained that GTAs were hired by departments in order to keep education affordable and class size tolerable.
and classise. Furthermore, it said that GTA's, although young, were not necessarily inexperienced and were thoroughly versed in their fields. Receiving instruction from a GTA, it said, is no
different than receiving instruction from a regular faculty member.
But Shulenburger said GTAs might not necessarily have the experience a regular faculty member did.
"A lot of learning is on going at the expense of the students," he said. "Probably one of every three GTAs is teaching a course for the first time. I don't want any of my GTAs to feel I don't value them. It would just be better if they could do course work for a year to get some preparation."
Expanded roles
Wil Linkugel, chairman of the department of communications studies, said he also was concerned about the expanded role of GTAs. In his department, 70 percent of all courses and 64 percent of graduate level courses are taught by GTAs.
"In this department, we had an undergraduate honors student who had completed the 24 credit hours required for graduation and only three of those hours were professor taught. In the past year our GT.AUG taught. Some of our best teaching has been done by GTAs but also some of our worst."
The department of communication studies has lost five full professors in the last 10 years and none have been replaced at that level. The department now employs 13 regular faculty members and 39 GTAs. Linkugel, who said he was confident that the current administration of the school was committed to rectifying the problem, said that the past administration allowed the program to deteriorate.
"I am frankly puzzled," Linkugel said. "Our graduate program was how we made our reputation. We had one of the five best graduate programs in the early 1970s. This was an exciting place with new ideas and new approaches.
"The University likes to point to the "Select Guide to Colleges" and talk about the quality of the University being four-star. What's going on here is not in keeping with a four-star university," Linkuke said.
Increased enrollment
accounted for 10 percent.
"In the college, it's been a matter of the large increase of students over the last years." Muyskens said. "We make do by taking faculty positions and turning them into graduate teaching assistantships, and that means inferior classes."
means interro class.
"A GTA is going to be a new teacher. If that person gets supervision and training, they can do well.
But it is a rare person who can get out of an undergraduate program, go into a graduate program and teach like a regular faculty member.
"We have got to do a lot more to help the first teacher do well on that assignment. We can turn this into a positive outcome," he said, "and good teachers," he said.
Robert Spires, chairman of the department of Spanish and Portuguese, also has more GTAs in his department. Unlike past years, GTAs now teach third-year courses.
"In the first four lower-division classes, GTAs can teach as well as anybody," Spires said. "But when
you put graduate students into composition and other upper-level courses, that's a problem."
And it's not just the undergraduates who suffer. Spires said. He said he thought that students should teach their teaching responsibilities, too.
"They're graduate students and this is too heavy a load for them. It takes time they should be devoting to their own studies." Spires said.
Making a choice
Kitty Kasselman, a GTA in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, said she appreciated the opportunity to teach at the university because of her teaching responsibilities with her own studies could be a problem.
"You have to have things done for the classes you teach," Kasselman said. "So lots of times I feel it takes time I would be spending on my project. Sometimes you have to make a choice and one or the other will suffer."
Lawrence Biscontini, another GTA in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, said he enjoyed teaching and was satisfied with the pay. He isn't happy, though, with his title.
but I happy "None of us are really teaching assistants," Biscontini said. "We don't assist anyone. We teach. We make our tests, we make quizzes, we make lesson plans and from the first day of classes until the final exam, all grading, evaluation and intervention on the student's behalf is done by us. If that is assisting, then all professors are teaching assistants also."
180. For now, KU is dependent on the labor of GTAs. The salary enrichment component of the Margin of Excellence — the Regents three-year plan to increase funding for Regents schools — while committed to achieving 95 percent faculty salary parity with KU's peer institutions, if successful, can only stabilize, not increase, faculty numbers. The other component of the Margin — mission-related enhancement — provides for the hiring of only 11 new faculty members in 1989 and three senior faculty members in 1990.
Looking at the future
Enrollment adjustment funds are at the discretion of each school's administration. Muyskens said that some new faculty would be hired in the college next year.
"We don't have a lot of resources for hire faculty, but we do have some." Muyksens said. "I expect that we'll have an increase at least five or six faculty members by next year."
Enrollment adjustment funds will not be forthcoming after next year unless there is an increase in enrollment. Muyksens said increased enrolment was not the solution.
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"We have to look carefully at enrollment and make the case around the state that continuing to increase the number of students while not increasing the budget threatens the quality of education," Muyksen said. "The message I want to get across is that the state's support is absolutely vital if we're going to be the kind of university that we think we are."
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