When I first applied to grad school five years ago, the university
assured me that only first year students acted as TA's. In rare cases,
you might teach (that is, babysit students during chemistry labs) for
your second year, but in most cases you would quickly be swiched to
research assistant status. (If only I'd gotten it in writing...) But
since then most of us have seen our teaching load increase, not
decrease. This is due to lack of PI funding in part. It's also because
of increased undergrad enrollment, leading to a shortage of TA's. I
used to have 10-12 students per lab, now I have 25-30. Unfortunately,
the school's answer to this is to reduce TA responsibility by video
taping pre-lab lectures and converting to fill-in-the-blank lab reports
that are easy to grade. So we can babysit more students, but have less
experience to use for future jobs.
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Karen Wheless wheless at sunchem.chem.uga.edu
"A room without books is as a body without a soul" Cicero
