University awards TAs for excellence

Recognizing outstanding classroom skills, University President Judith Rodin presented an award for teaching to 10 graduate students and teaching assistants yesterday. The two-year old Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students, awards recipients $500 and formal recognition. Undergraduates nominate the recognized graduate students. A committee of faculty, graduate students and past winners makes the final selection from among the nominees. Sanjay Chugh, Thomas English, Amy Garrett, Fariha Khan, Samuel Trieu Nguyen, John Oberdiek, Erik Simpson, Jonah Steinberg, Paulina Alberto and Timothy Duncan were the lucky 10 winners this year. At the presentation ceremony, held in the Arthur Ross Gallery of the Fisher Fine Arts Library, Rodin said that graduate students -- who are often teaching assistants in large lecture classes -- are the main contact between faculty and undergraduates in many courses. "Our graduate students are on the front line in the classroom for the undergraduates," Rodin said. According to Rodin, the award stemmed from a desire "to recognize the talent of our graduate teaching assistants." Though the award was actually created three years ago by History Professor Walter Licht and members of the Graduate Student Activities Council, it was formally sponsored by Rodin herself two years ago. Licht, who chaired this year's selection committee, praised the graduate students who originally created the award, highlighting the fact that undergraduates, rather than faculty and administration, get to recognize their own teachers. "I was especially pleased by the democratic nature of the award," Licht said. After the list of nominees was narrowed from 280 to 30 by the selection committee, the remaining candidates were asked to write a statement of their own philosophy on teaching. And Licht said that these statements really showed the nominees' commitment to the classroom. "There's a lot of love in these documents," Licht said. And winners of the award said it was the undergraduates that gave them the motivation needed to teach. "The best way that I can tell that I made a difference is by the undergraduates themselves," said Duncan, a chemistry graduate student. And Alberto, a History graduate student, agreed with Duncan, saying that the award was special for her because it is "selected by the undergraduates themselves and not by any other committee." The award is just one in a series of University attempts to improve the quality of graduate student life. Earlier this year, Penn announced that it would pay for five years of health insurance for graduate students receiving full aid and increase stipends. But despite these changes, a group of Penn graduate students -- calling themselves Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania, or GET-UP -- is seeking to unionize, and have labeled the University's efforts attempts to temporarily appease graduate students in order to hamper their push for unionization. However, Rodin said that this is an inaccurate portrayal of Penn's motives. "I am clearly disappointed that the students who feel the need to unionize would mischaracterize these changes, which I think they have done," Rodin said.