Top grad students noted for TA work

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge declared the week of April 5 to 11 Graduate Student Appreciation Week, during which colleges and universities throughout the state honored their graduate and professional students. And since a large portion of Penn's student body consists of graduate students, there are few campuses where the commemoration would be more appropriate. Each year, thousands of Penn students receive instruction from graduate teaching assistants in both recitation and lecture settings. In a recent effort to include undergraduates in teaching evaluation, Penn's Graduate Students Association Council has begun a process that will allow undergraduates to nominate their teaching assistants for an award. And members of GSAC say there are some TAs that stand out from the crowd, like Abby McGowen, a third-year History doctoral candidate. "One of the starting reasons to come to grad school was to teach," McGowen said. "I've been really enjoying it." After working with the Writing Across the University program last semester, McGowen now leads a recitation in world history. She said she finds teaching to be a challenging yet rewarding profession. "It's a very interesting translation process, trying to translate my ideas and theories of history into terms? that people who don't have a lot of background in the field can understand," McGowen said. According to McGowen, her favorite part of being a TA is "the moment where all of the students are no longer debating shared facts from the lecture but are starting to create their own analysis of the material. That's the moment where you can see how history is written." McGowen discovered her chosen field as an undergraduate at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., when she stumbled upon a study-abroad program that would take her to India. With an undergraduate degree in South Asian studies, McGowen is now pursuing a dissertation on "the history of handicraft [in India]." But she admitted she is a little anxious about the prospect of finding employment after graduation given the competitiveness of academia. "My mom says I'd better learn how to make cappuccino," she quipped. Roger Lin, the recipient of several awards for outstanding instruction, is also accustomed to rigorous challenges. As a fifth-year Mathematics doctoral student from the National Taiwan University, Lin said he teaches primarily because it is a major source of financial support, adding, "I also find being a TA interesting." Lin is working toward a dissertation in analytic geometry but emphasized the importance of paying attention to the undergraduates he teaches. "From my experience, I would say that the quality that a student appreciates most is your genuine care [for] their progress and learning." Lin said. "They want to know that you really care how they're learning." According to Lin, the use of quizzes in recitation is crucial to effective teaching. "[A quiz] will give me a fair image of how everybody is working. It is also a good way to learn things about the person? to recognize their style and their problems." When Lin is away from the David Rittenhouse Laboratories, he said he enjoys "watching sports, especially all the Philadelphia teams." Just down the hall from Lin is Jason Parsley's office. Parsley, a first-year doctoral student in Mathematics, thinks that "creativity is a good quality for a TA to have." "Students are going to become a little bored and a little hesitant to participate," Parsely said. "One of the main things I try to do for my students is to be available to answer questions as much as possible." Parsley, a graduate of Duke University with a degree in mechanical engineering, likes to emphasize the practical applications of mathematics. "I'd say a lot of students became more interested when I told them about some of its applications? which include the RSA algorithm used by Netscape [for message encoding]," Parsely said.