Spring 1999

Cornell University’s Ithaca campus is composed of seven undergraduate colleges, the graduate school and three professional colleges. There were 1,983 graduate students supported by assistantships in fall 1998. It is of great importance to the university that TA’s and RA’s across fields and colleges have similar educational experiences, opportunities and responsibilities.

In fall 1997, Dean Walter Cohen asked the college deans to appoint a faculty or staff representative to a committee that would develop more uniform policies governing the terms and conditions of the worklife of TA's and RA’s and the mutual responsibilities of faculty and these students for the creation and maintenance of an equitable, supportive and professional environment for graduate education. He asked the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly to appoint two graduate student representatives to the committee. The committee members were:

• Hilary Ford, Assistant Dean and Director of Graduate Admissions, Graduate School
• Kathleen Gemmell, Director of Planning, Policy and Academic Support, Arts
• Stefan Hames, graduate student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, GPSA representative
• Barbara Koslowski, professor, Human Development, HE
• John Schwarz, grad student in Government and GPSA representative
• Charles Seyler, professor, Electrical Engineering, Engineering
• Don Viands, Academic Programs and Professor, ALS
• Mary Woods, professor, Architecture, AAP.

The committee considered the issues raised by Dean Cohen and others and formulated a set of recommendations. Following is a summary of the committee’s recommendations.

The University of Minnesota Graduate School has a three page document entitled Mutual Responsibilities in Graduate Education at the University of Minnesota. This document describes and defines the purposes of graduate education and the shared responsibilities of faculty and students in seven principles. It resulted from discussions of faculty and administrators and students at the U of Minnesota. After three years of deliberation by the various constituencies, the executive committee of the Graduate School at Minnesota adopted the document. While the document is not legally binding according to their counsel’s office, it provides baseline expectations that set the tone and general guidelines for TA and RA assignments and expectations. The committee recommends that the General Committee create such a document. Further, the committee urges the implementation of the following recommendations:

1. TA assignments: Workloads vary greatly by course or assignment. In making TA assignments, fields need to consider the difficulty of a given assignment and the curricular background of prospective TA’s and factor in the time needed for these TA’s to learn the material. To make appropriate and equitable TA assignments, DGS’s must obtain adequate information from supervising faculty about what TA’s will be expected to do in each course. Where there are continuing disparities in the workload requirements from course to course, fields should establish some weighting of courses so that TA assignments known to be heavy might be balanced for individual TA’s in other years by assignments known to be relatively lighter.

2. Letters of appointment: An appointment letter specifically articulating each TA’s and RA’s responsibilities should be written at the time an offer of admission is made and every subsequent year as specific TA and RA assignments are made. The TA, RA, and GRA assistantships are for 15 work hours for the nine months of the academic year. (Guide to Graduate Study, page 24).

3. Required teaching: If a field requires teaching as a component of an M.S., M.A., M.S./Ph.D. or Ph.D. program these guidelines should be followed:

1. For M.S. or M.A. students, the maximum teaching requirement should be one semester;
2. For M.S./Ph.D. or Ph.D. students, the maximum requirement should be two semesters or equivalent;
3. Students supported on fellowships should not have to relinquish those funds in order to teach unless their eligibility for fellowship support can be extended;
4. The funding agencies for externally funded students must be notified if the teaching requirement must be met during the period of external support;
5. If the funding agency does not allow students to teach while receiving its funds, a student who does teach must be supported on TA or other funds;
6. Professional master’s students should be excluded from a teaching requirement.

4. Timing of required teaching: Teaching experience required by the field must be completed during the first four years of a student’s enrollment.

5. Appropriate TA and RA assignments: Student assistants should be asked to perform only duties that are directly related to the academic mission of their assignment. Special care should be given to the fair and equitable distribution of all tasks. For example, in a situation where there are several TA’s or RA’s, all should share tasks equally without regard to race, gender or ethnicity. All faculty members are encouraged to become aware of possible unequal assignments and guard against them through thoughtful and sensitive task distribution. For example, all coffee drinkers should share equally in the coffee making duties without regard to status. TA’s and RA’s should never be asked or required to provide childcare, petcare, catering or other personal services as part of their TA or RA responsibilities.

6. Publications: Authorship issues for work done by the student should be resolved prior to the beginning of the research or the research proposal. If the published material is derived from the student’s thesis research, the student should expect to be an author.

1. Students appointed as RA’s should not be expected to contribute more than a maximum average of 15 hours a week of non-thesis work on the faculty’s research project.
2. Appropriate kinds of work should constitute the bulk of the assignment. (The committee recognizes that any university position requires a range of administrative and support activities, but these should be a relatively minor portion of the RA responsibilities. See # 5 above)
3. The remainder of the student’s time should be devoted to classes or the student’s own research.
4. If the RA assignment is on the topic of the student’s thesis, then the 15-hours/week guideline does not apply.
5. RA responsibilities do not follow the student academic calendar but rather the university calendar. Holidays are Labor Day, the Thanksgiving holiday, the winter break (approximately 12/22 to 1/2), and Memorial Day. RA’s appointed for the summer are paid over a 12 week period but are expected to work 10 weeks.
6. Students asked to work on university holidays should be compensated in a mutually agreed way established before the holiday.

8. Apprenticeship and supervision: Faculty members should observe their assistants in their work roles and provide helpful feedback. All students who TA and who have no TA experience should participate in a TA training program, either in their respective field or college or the program provided by the Office of Instructional Support.

9. Performance review: Faculty are strongly encouraged to provide routine performance reviews for TA’s and RA’s as part of the general learning experience.

If the supervising faculty or staff member is dissatisfied with the quality or quantity of work being performed, a timely and thorough performance review must be performed. This should be a first step in addressing the assistant’s performance. When a supervising faculty or staff member is dissatisfied with a student’s performance, the supervisor must advise the student in writing of his/her concerns and allow sufficient time for the student to respond to the supervisor’s concerns. A copy of the letter must be sent to the Director of the Graduate Students. Specific recommendations for changes in work performance should be provided in writing.

The TA or RA is encouraged to confer with the supervisor and the DGS. The Graduate School grievance policy provides a mechanism for further review if the graduate student believes the performance review to be unfair and he or she is unable to resolve the matter at the field level.

10. Discussion of areas of concern to graduate students: The Dean of the Graduate School should assemble periodically the DGS’s by area and initiate discussion of issues related to various aspects of graduate students’ experiences and to seek common practices that will benefit faculty, TA’s and RA’s and undergraduate students. Further, each DGS is encouraged to provide an opportunity for faculty in the field to discuss TA and RA issues.

11. Clarification of DGSs’ duties: A committee composed of graduate faculty should review, revise and distribute an improved description of DGS responsibilities. This effort should be directed by the General Committee and include input from the entire graduate faculty.

12. English proficiency: Foreign students’ inadequate English language skills may lead to inequitable work assignments as more fluent English speakers assume additional recitation sections to provide quality undergraduate instruction. The DGS or admission committee members are strongly encouraged to conduct telephone or interactive visual computer interviews with foreign applicants who are being considered for admission with the support of a teaching assistantship. Applicants whose language skills are not adequate for effective communication n the classroom should not be offered admission that depends on such support.