Marriage, Family and Human Development

January 2, 2001

Updated September 2002

TA POLICY

The following policy regarding Teaching Assistants was voted upon and approved by the faculty, but the implementation of the policy is dependant upon adequate funding. It is the desire of the faculty that efforts be made to acquire the funding that will allow (a) the full implementation of this policy, and (b) a pay rate for TAs that is comparable to wages paid in other departments in the social sciences (e.g., psychology).

Policy: Pending funding availability, any faculty member teaching a class with 30 students or more will be provided paid TAs for one hour per week for each 10 students (if a professor teaches 2 small sections he or she can have 1 TA for 10 hours to cover both classes). For classes with fewer than 30 students, and for those who would like more help, additional TAs may be >hired= for credit. Finally, new faculty and/or faculty teaching a course for the first time will be given an additional 5 hours per week per course.

Benefits of Policy: The policy benefits faculty, TAs, and students. First, it helps all faculty by (a) allowing more time to be spent on providing more individualized feedback on written work, and/or (b) reallocating some time used for grading written work to be spent on other tasks. In particular, it helps those faculty who teach larger classes. In the past, these faculty have been hurt the most in that they did not have enough students to get TA help, but they had too many students to grade all of their papers effectively on their own. This policy will provide at least some relief to these professors. Furthermore, both TAs and professors will benefit from this arrangement because TAs will be better compensated and, therefore, professors will be able to recruit better TAs . Second, given that preparation for a new course requires time to prepare exams, quizzes, and assignments that more established courses do not need, this policy provides additional help for these tasks. Finally, students will benefit from these changes because their written work will receive more individualized attention and critical feedback.

Department/Faculty Responsibilities: For the implementation of this policy, both the department and individual faculty members have certain responsibilities. First, in order to gather requests for TAs in an orderly fashion, faculty members need to request TAs at the same time scheduling requests are made. Prior to each semester/term, the MFHD Secretary sends out a memo concerning class scheduling. This memo will include a reminder to faculty that if they would like a TA(s) they need to request it when scheduling the class. Thus, while the department will provide a reminder of the need to request a TA, each faculty member is required to request a TA. Second, in order to insure a quality pool of applicants for TA positions, the department will increase efforts to advertise for applicants. Also, individual faculty members are encouraged to recruit TAs from their classes (i.e., identify exceptional students who might be asked to TA a class).