As a joint Ph.D. candidate in American history and education, Tina Collins was surprised when she received her teaching assistant assignment last fall. As opposed to the American history class she expected, Collins was assigned to teach a survey course in Latin American history.
"I've never taken a course in Latin American history as a graduate student," Collins said, "and I took only one related class as an undergraduate."
Collins is just one of many graduate students who serve as TAs in courses not specific to their academic discipline. As part of their fellowship package, Ph.D. students must fulfill a two-year service requirement in teaching.
These mismatched assignments -- where a graduate student focused on one field is assigned to teach in another -- pose problems for both graduates and the undergraduates they instruct, raising questions about the amount of knowledge the TAs will be able to provide to the students.
"It's a huge disadvantage to the students who take these classes. They are not getting the best quality of teachers, and that's going to reflect on the quality of the course," Takahashi said. "That's bad for undergraduates."
Indeed, Collins said, her course suffered due to her lack of prior knowledge.
"I'm not sure how useful we were to our students," she said, adding that she had to learn the material herself before teaching each week.
According to Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Jack Nagel, the service requirement helps Ph.D. candidates gain valuable experience and develop as teachers.
Collins and others argue, however, that teaching in a field that is not their specialization will not benefit them in their future careers.
"If that was the case, should any other teaching count?" said Sayumi Takahashi, co-chairwoman of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature and literary theory.
"What if they teach scuba diving or fitness classes?" she continued.
Takahashi herself has been assigned to teach classes outside her discipline. She argues that, by assigning graduate students to teach something not in their field, the University redefines their status from students to Penn employees.
Nagel maintains, however, that the teaching experience is an educational one.
"Students get generous support [in fellowship packages], because we are supporting them as students, and they are learning as students," Nagel said.
Some graduate students, such as Mary Beth Wetli, agree. When the Ph.D. candidate in German literature was assigned to TA a political science course, she looked at it as a unique opportunity.
Wetli was supposed to teach a German language course, but when enrollment did not reach the minimum number of students to warrant teaching the class, she was assigned to a course entitled "Violence, War and Political Visions."
Although she was given less than a week's notice of the change, she remained positive. "I was pretty excited," Wetli said.
"It gave me the opportunity to gain some insight on how these large lectures function and become more familiar with how students digest information," she said. "It was enormously useful."
