Teaching Assistantships
Teaching Experience
A goal of our graduate program is to provide our graduate students with training and mentorship in research and teaching.
Introducing students to the teaching of science at the college level provides them with a complete set of research and instructional skills required for a successful academic career.
Independent of their ultimate career path, we expect that all students will develop a high regard for excellence in teaching as well as research.
Our teaching requirement provides each student with significant hands‐on experience in college level instruction. It also develops the ability to convey ideas accurately and persuasively in a variety of contexts and it hones the skills to make presentations with poise and impact.
Our supervised teaching program is designed to expose each student to a variety of distinct instructional environments by moving gradually from small group instruction in a laboratory setting to leading discussion sections and review sessions for lecture courses. To achieve this, students serve as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for 1 laboratory course and 2 upper division lecture courses under the direct mentorship of the course instructor.TA Assignments
Students serve as a TA in 3 courses during their graduate career, equivalent to 1 year of teaching experience. Students normally TA a lab course during their second year, then lecture courses in their third and fourth years in the program.
Students enroll in BGGN 500 each quarter in which they are a teaching assistant.
TA Training
Before their first TA assignment, each student will attend the Division of Biological Sciences TA Training Workshop (held at the beginning of each academic quarter).
Our TA training program has 2 distinctive components: an initial 1-day TA boot camp and subsequent follow-up sessions and workshops. All first-year TAs must attend at least one follow-up session.
When teaching for the second and third time, students are required to attend at least 1 additional follow-up session or 1 workshop offered by the UCSD Center for Teaching Development (CTD).
TA Evaluation and Awards
The instructor for each course assigns grades to their TAs based on their performance. Students receive feedback about their teaching via direct observation from the course instructor, the Division’s TA Faculty Advisor, the Division’s Senior TA or a representative from CTD.
At the end of the quarter, both the course instructor and the undergraduate students in the class will provide feedback to each TA based on how well prepared the TA was for the section, whether material was explained clearly, whether the TA spoke clearly, and several other criteria.
The Division offers a series of teaching excellence awards presented to the top 3 graduate student TAs for each quarter. The awards are announced at our annual Science Retreat.
TA Faculty Advisor
The TA Faculty Advisor serves as a resource and advisor for all Biology TAs. He or she coordinates the TA training every quarter, and helps resolve issues that TAs might have with students, other TAs, or with their instructors, or issues that instructors have with their TAs.
The TA Faculty Advisor also serves as a liaison between the CTD and Biology instructors when there is information that needs to be passed on in either direction.
