Undergraduates for a Better Education is working with the administration and Graduate Student Organization to turn the results of their recent student survey into progress.

After releasing a report that found more than 60 percent of Syracuse University students are dissatisfied with TAs’ ability to help students learn, Co-president Emily Ballard and Sawyer Cresap met with Interim Chancellor Eric Spina and Associate Provost Andria Costello Staniec Monday to discuss ways to improve undergraduate education.

The administration worked with UBE last spring, helping them produce the survey. In the first follow-up meeting since the report was released, UBE showed the administration the entire range of comments given in response to the survey, Costello Staniec said. She added that the administration wants to continue working with UBE, though no date has been established yet for another meeting.

Ballard also met with GSO President Patrick Neary and Director of Graduate School Programs Glenn Wright to talk about how to improve TAs’ instructional ability.

“We had a very good conversation about steps to take, what things can we improve on, what methods should they use to try to find real improvements to how instruction goes at the university,” Neary said.

Though he said he wasn’t surprised at the results of the survey, he pointed out that the report didn’t indicate a wholly negative student opinion toward TAs.

“There were more responses with ‘satisfied’ or ‘highly satisfied’ than there were ‘dissatisfied or ‘highly dissatisfied,” he said. “The conclusions they (were) coming in with was kind of trying to lump neutral in with dissatisfied, and there kind of are pros and cons to taking that approach.”

But both Neary and Ballard are looking for ways to improve the TA program. Neary said he would like to see more time during TA orientation dedicated to instructional methods rather than university policy, while Ballard wanted to focus on evening out discrepancies in grading standards among TAs who teach the same course.

Wright, director of graduate studies, said he would like the TA program to start proactively seeking out “underperforming” TAs rather than waiting for problems to arise.

He said TA orientation changes constantly to adapt to input from TAs, university administration and the program coordinators. Next year’s TA orientation will “almost certainly” be pushed forward by a day so that it doesn’t conflict with the international graduate student orientation run by the Center for International Services, he said.

TAs would benefit, Wright added, if there were stronger involvement on the part of individual departments and if TAs took advantage of optional programs for them that run year-round. But he said that most of the TAs’ primary focus is on their own research and career goals.

“We can’t necessarily expect that TA-land is going to be populated by a lot of people who are really, really invested in doing really well at it,” he said.

Wright said that both Ballard and Neary expressed interest in attending a meeting of TA program coordinators in about three weeks to discuss changes to next year’s TA orientation program. 

Bill Coplin, an SU professor who serves as an adviser for UBE, said he wasn’t surprised at the survey results. Since the survey’s creation in 1988, it has shown student dissatisfaction with TAs, he said.

Coplin said one of the biggest problems facing TAs is the fact that many of them are expected to teach courses they haven’t taken themselves. Since 1978, he has used undergraduate TAs who have taken his class in previous semesters and received an A, he said.

He added UBE’s ultimate goal extends far beyond working with the TA program. He said the group’s ultimate goal is to “lobby” the administration into putting more resources and attention into undergraduate education.

“They’re like a lobby group lobbying on behalf of undergraduates to get a little more power — they know they’re not going to get a lot — to get the administration and the faculty to take care of some of these problems,” he said.

Ballard said she and Cresap are looking to form a long-term working relationship with the administration so that UBE can accomplish goals that reach further than most students’ four-year tenure. Some of their long-term goals include working with SU’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment to release an undergraduate survey every two years.

Associate Provost Costello-Staniec said she saw UBE’s work with the survey as a step toward greater cooperation between students and administration.

Said Costello-Staniec: “I was actually really encouraged by the report, and I think that there’s a great opportunity here to have students engaged in making their education what they feel it should be.”

Published on October 23, 2013 at 12:43 am

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