Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

There is also a question of numbers. If one uses graduate
students as teaching assistants during one-fourth of their
time at Cornell, then that means that only one-fourth of
the 3,500 students are teaching assistants at any one time.
As we operate courses now, that's not quite enough. All
of these are areas that we can change and will try to change,
in the direction of making all graduate students who could
profit by teaching experience and who would do a good job
of teaching, a part of the group from whom teaching assistants
are selected.
Q. What has been the reaction of the departments to this
proposal of more teaching time for all graduate students?
A. Well, it's been mixed. Some departments, a dozen or
more, have made a stipulation that a PhD in that department
will not be given unless the student has done some
teaching in that area.
Q. Is there a large financial disparity between a teaching
assistant and a research assistant?
A. No. We thought there was, but our research indicates
there is not. There are individual problems, but, on the average,
the teaching assistant is paid at least as well as the
research assistant. Also, the research assistant typically has
an easier time of being supported during the summer than
the teaching assistant. So one of the aims we have in mind
is to attempt to provide summer support for the teaching
assistant either in doing research or in fellowship support
during the summer. And we have not, by any means, solved
that problem yet. [See Ford grant story, page 29.]
Q. Is there uniformity at Cornell in the supervision of
teaching assistants?
A. No. Each professor does it differently. One of the
most interesting developments in this area is the plan which
Professor Walter LaFeber has employed in his introductory
'Actually, there are
plenty of small
classes . . .
The difficulty is
that they are not
distributed well.'
American history course. This course, by the way, no longer
treats history in the traditional chronological manner and
is another example of an improvement in undergraduate
education which went on independently of the Commission.
In this course, the professor lectures on the first day of the
week. The second time the class meets each week, the
teaching assistant is present along with a professor who is
drawing out the students in provocative ways, dealing with
the subject matter, talking about competing interpretations,
developing a sense that all is not cut and dried. At the last
session of the week, the teaching assistant by himself deals
with the class and further develops the question of interpretation,
getting the students themselves involved.
Q. Are the number of students in each of these classes
the same as the sequence you just described?
A. No. The first is all of the students together in a lecture
with a thoroughly prepared, rather formal, lecture by the
history professor who is most competent in that particular
area of subject matter. The second and third classes are in
small sections.
Q. A great deal of financial support for graduate students
comes from outside the university, usually foundations or
the Federal government. Do they place restrictions on the
use of graduate students as teachers?
A. Yes. An agency giving a fellowship so that the student
can work full time is not attuned to the idea that he
should spend half his time teaching. On the other hand, the
agencies have begun to take a more flexible position, and
many of us have been working with the agencies to try to
get them to take an even more flexible position. One of the
curiosities in this respect has been the Woodrow Wilson
Fellowship, the purpose of which is to bring more distinguished
students into the teaching profession. However, the
Woodrow Wilsons, for the first year, at least, of their graduate
careers are not allowed to teach. We're moving in two
directions simultaneously. We hope to make up packages of
graduate student support, such as a first year as a Woodrow
Wilson Fellow, later years under other fellowship support,
and a year or two as a teaching assistant. We're also trying
to get the federal agencies to take a somewhat more flexible
attitude towards part time teaching. National Science
Foundation fellows can now spend some small fraction of
their time teaching and this turns out to be a very useful
thing, indeed.
Q. You mention the unique use of teaching assistants in
Professor LaFeber's class. Are there others worth noting?
A. We have uncovered a great deal of imagination and a
lot of different ways in which teaching assistants are factored
into the teaching process. One area that the commission
has examined is the development of apprenticeship
programs. Under such a program a fellowship holder in the
second year of his graduate study might, during the spring
of that year, work part time for perhaps only an hour or
two a week with the professor with whom he will be teaching
in the fall. This enables him to make a smooth and
gradual transition from being a fellowship holder to being
a teacher in his own right. This is an area we would like to
explore further to see whether the experience of some professors,
who have been trying this approach, could be extended
into a larger sphere.
Q. Has there been any attempt to teach the teaching assistants
to teach?
A. There have been courses like this. Dean Mauritz
Johnson of the School of Education has a seminar in the
spring term which meets once a week and has drawn in the
past some fifty or more people, most of whom have been
teaching assistants. This has been more for giving perspective
on college teaching than for instruction in teaching.
May 1967 21