New Brunswick, N.J.
Between mouthfuls of pasta and salad, a group of graduate students at Rutgers University here trade tips and share stories about the challenges of teaching undergraduates.

"What do you do if they just sit there and refuse to speak?" one asks.

"I learn their names and call on them," someone answers. "Then they have to say something."

"But how do you do that in a big lecture? They can just hide in the audience," argues another.

You won't hear any grand theories of pedagogy or lofty debates about the true purpose of higher education among these students. Their discussion -- part of a workshop to orient new teaching assistants -- focuses on what actually goes on in the classroom. They talk frankly about grading ("Some students are shooting for a C") and discipline ("When they're just out of high school, they can be kind of hard to control"), along with their own fears ("I'm very comfortable with the material, but I'm not very comfortable being in the classroom").

Similar scenes are repeated each fall at orientation workshops across the country, particularly at research universities, like Rutgers, that use small armies of graduate students to teach introductory courses or lead discussion groups in big classes. Many of the programs were started in the late 1980s, in response to a chorus of criticism about how graduate students with no clue how to teach were being loosed upon undergraduate classrooms.

Most colleges that use teaching assistants now boast some kind of instruction program. Some are mandatory; some are not. Some last three days; others only a couple of hours. They can be cursory sessions at which graduate students are thanked for their hard work and wished the best of luck, or they can be boot camps for novice instructors. Programs can even vary from department to department. For example, a TA in English may be significantly better prepared than a TA in biology at the same college, or vice versa.

Recently, however, a number of institutions have decided that what they've been doing is not enough. A recent study at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, for example, found that the TA's in some departments receive no training at all. As tuition continues to rise, parents and undergraduates are demanding their money's worth. As a result, many colleges are beefing up their current programs or adding new, more rigorous ones. They are providing year-round training rather than one-shot orientation sessions, matching up new TA's with faculty mentors, even offering certificate programs that require graduate students to take a series of courses in teaching at the college level. TA unions at Michigan and elsewhere are pushing to make such training a part of their contracts with institutions.

"Even places that have had a history of training TA's are trying to focus on it more," says Stacey Tice, director of the teaching-assistant program and assistant dean of the graduate school at Syracuse University. "And places that haven't been paying attention are realizing that TA's are really important if you're serious about the quality of undergraduate education."

'Establish Your Authority'

At Rutgers, TA-training seminars are offered throughout the year, on such topics as designing effective tests and using technology in the classroom. Like other universities, Rutgers also offers to videotape classes taught by TA's and then arrange to have faculty members provide feedback. All of this is part of the TA Project, an effort that has grown significantly since it was started 16 years ago.

The one-day orientation program is similar to what is offered at universities elsewhere. In one session, Mark Frank, an associate professor of communications, encourages TA's to make eye contact with students and to move around the room while they teach. That isn't a surprise coming from a professor whose research specialty is nonverbal communication. He also tells students to take their lectures nice and slow.

"You can't just sail through very complex things," he says. "You have to pause and give people a chance to catch up."

This admonition comes up again during the session "Motivating the Science Student," taught by Joseph A. Potenza, a professor of chemistry. After writing a complicated equation on the board, he turns to the room full of new TA's. "While this is technically correct, I have not engaged the minds of the students," he says, quickly erasing the work. He writes out the equation again, this time making sure to explain each step.

Mr. Potenza also discusses how to correct students in class without damaging their egos. "You have to establish your authority," he says. "But try to do it in as pleasant a way as possible."

The TA's dutifully take notes, ask questions, and try to soak up as much information as possible in a day. Tatiana Fadeeva, a new graduate student in chemistry, calls the orientation "useful and interesting," although she isn't sure that one day is enough. "I think it takes more than that to learn how to teach," she says.

Officials at Michigan have reached the same conclusion.

Michigan, which has a longstanding TA-training program, takes pride in having one of the most respected teaching centers in the country. If there is anyplace that could be expected to properly prepare TA's for the classroom, it is Michigan.

That's why it was surprising when an internal study last year found that the university wasn't living up to that excellent reputation when it came to training TA's. The report found that some departments did nothing to prepare their graduate students, and that others offered fewer than four hours of training. It was especially tough on physical-science departments, for allowing "first-term graduate students to teach very challenging, heavily enrolled courses."

The report was a wake-up call for the university. "It had some pretty damning things in it," says Constance E. Cook, director of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. The university responded by expanding its faculty-mentor program, begun in 1996, to include all graduate students. It also added practice-teaching sessions to its annual orientation, at which graduate students present a short lecture and are given feedback from their peers and from representatives of the teaching center.

Complaining Parents

The re-examination of TA training was spurred in part by complaints from parents of incoming freshman. "The first question we always get is, 'Why does my child have to be taught by a GSI?" says Ms. Cook, using the initials for graduate-student instructor. "We have people writing nasty letters to the dean, saying that individual GSI's aren't teaching well, which isn't always the case -- but sometimes it is."

The pressure also came from the TA union at Michigan, which has bargained for more training for its members. And while problems remain, Ms. Cook says, the report has already inspired action. "More and more departments are taking this seriously and requiring GSI's to have experience before they go into the classroom," she says.

At the University of New Hampshire, too, there was concern about the quality of TA training. That's why university officials recently added a minor -- they call it a cognate -- in college teaching. Students in the program take 12 hours of courses: 4 in general teaching concepts, 4 in discipline-specific areas, and 4 in which the graduate student teaches a class under the supervision of a committee of faculty members. About 60 percent of graduate students who plan to pursue academic careers sign up.

What's more, many departments have expanded their programs to train TA's over the past several years, says Lee F. Seidel, director of the university's teaching center and a professor of health management and policy. "We knew we needed to spruce up what we were doing for TA's," he says. "The deans were telling us that, the parents were telling us that, and so were the TA's."

Syracuse University also has added an online course in college teaching for its graduate students. In addition, it has begun offering 12 seminars a year on teaching-related topics, along with more-comprehensive workshops in both spring and fall. "A lot of institutions that thought they were doing a good job have found that teaching assistants weren't as comfortable as they could be," says Ms. Tice, director of the university's TA program.

Howard University, for example, offers graduate students 12-hour certificates in college teaching starting this year. It has also begun a mentor program in which graduate students shadow a faculty member. The new programs are an acknowledgement that one brief orientation session can't teach someone how to conduct a class. "Two days is not enough," says John Reilly, coordinator of TA training and a professor of English at Howard.

Until recently, few TA's at Howard taught classes on their own because the university felt that they weren't ready to do so. Graduate students, however, complained that they weren't gaining experience in the classroom. The certificate and mentor programs are Howard's attempt to have it both ways: allowing graduate students a chance to teach without sacrificing the education of undergraduates.

Many other institutions, however, have not had the same reluctance regarding handing control of the classroom over to graduate students. "TA's were widely used as inexpensive labor," says Mr. Reilly. "The change that has occurred at big research universities -- the past exploiters of TA labor -- has been to acknowledge that this work should be a learning experience and can make them better professors."

'Learn It on Your Own'

But making sure that all graduate students receive sufficient training is difficult for centralized programs like the one at Rutgers. While the one-day orientation session is mandatory, the seminars offered throughout the year are not. And while some departments insist that their TA's have their classes videotaped and reviewed, others do not. This inconsistency among disciplines results in some TA's praising their training, while others often complain that they are given little if any support.

Sahana V. Murthy, a graduate student in physics and astronomy at Rutgers, says that other than a brief, general orientation, she received no guidance on what to do in the classroom. "In the sciences, they just throw you in," she says. "They think because you know the material, you should be able to teach it. They don't teach you how to teach it."

The situation isn't any better for some in the humanities. "There's a lot of emphasis on doing research. The teaching is very much the background thing," says Gary Bartlett, a graduate student in philosophy.

In other departments, TA's do get the help they need. "The faculty are there for you," says Corey Leiberman, a graduate student in communication, information, and library studies. "They don't just throw you in there and expect you to learn it on your own." His department has its own training session for new TA's.

Making sure that all departments properly prepare their graduate students for teaching remains a challenge, says Barbara E. Bender, director of the TA Project and associate dean of the graduate school at Rutgers. "Some disciplines are doing more than others, and we're working with those who need to develop more-formal programs," she says.

That help has included starting a program in which experienced TA's are matched with new ones, and adding a semester-long course called "Introduction to College Teaching," which can be taken by graduate students in all disciplines.

Such changes are a sign that colleges are beginning to see graduate students as professors-in-training rather than simply as a source of cheap labor, says Laura Border, president of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education, a national group that seeks to improve college teaching, and director of the graduate-teacher program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Colorado, which has one of the oldest TA-training programs in the country, awards certificates in teaching to graduate students who have completed 20 hours of discipline-specific training activities, have had their classes videotaped by the teaching center, and have produced teaching portfolios. The portfolios comprise material, like student evaluations, documenting the TAs' performance in the classroom. In recent years, other colleges have been following suit. "It's more than a trend," says Ms. Border. "It's a movement."

Mr. Reilly, at Howard, also thinks that colleges are moving in the right direction. "At a research university, people are deeply involved in the production of knowledge, and they would prefer it if grad students spent every waking moment in the lab and learn how to teach later," he says. "Now they're realizing that, even if you're at a research university, you're going to have to teach something."