Biology instructor Amanda Poffinbarger has been fighting it for a month.

On the April 13 faculty meeting, Chair of Biological Sciences Andrew Methven implemented a program that will allow graduate students to teach Biological Principles and Issues next fall.

Students often use the 1000-level course to fill their general education requirement.

Poffinbarger said the idea of allowing graduate students to teach has been brought up at other faculty meetings prior to April 13.

The faculty also voted against the program two years ago.

“There are several faculty members that are against this besides me,” Poffinbarger said.

Dean of the College of Sciences Mary Anne Hanner has received letters from at least 15 faculty members expressing their displeasure in Methven’s decision, Poffinbarger said.

Poffinbarger said students will be put at a disadvantage if a graduate student with no teaching experience teaches students.

Poffinbarger said she is scheduled to teach six sections of the class next fall, but will only technically teaching two of them. She said the graduate student would teach the other four.

“Out of the 14 sections of this (general education) class, eight will be taught by graduate students,” Poffinbarger said.

She feels Methven’s decision affects her academic freedom.

“Our mission statement states you will be taught by a faculty member,” Poffinbarger said. “That whole thing is changing now.”

She said the department presented this decision to her. “There are several reasons,” Methven said. “The primary one is we got a lot of graduate students who want teaching experience.”

He said some of the graduate students who are done with the masters degree program would go to community colleges and teach. He said by having graduate students teach the general education class, they will gain proper experience to teach at community colleges.

Methven said some of the graduate students go to doctorate programs and a variety of those programs require them to teach.

“I think they are capable of doing it,” Methven said when asked if graduate students have enough experience teaching in a college atmosphere. “Not all students are, probably, and this would not be students that are first-year graduate students.”

The biological science graduate school is a two-year program. Methven said only graduate students in their second year will be eligible to teach.

Second year graduate students also assist professors in labs prior to their second year of graduate school, Methven said.

As for Poffinbarger’s concern, Methven said students might be weary of graduate students teaching class, but other students might not.

“The other perspective is some students might prefer it because they will have someone closer to their own age,” he said. “There might be more of a connection.”

Four graduate students will be teaching the general education class. There will also be a training program for graduate students before the start of the fall semester.

A faculty member of the department will oversee that program, Methven said.

The English Department also has a program that allows graduate students to teach Composition and Language as well as Composition and Literature, which started in the fall of 2005.

Both courses are 1000-level classes that students often take to fill the general education requirement.

“The graduate student who teaches those courses begin with a mentor teaching class,” said Robin Murray, an English professor and program director. “They work with a tenured faculty member who’s teaching either a 1001 or 1002, or the honors equivalents.”

Murray said graduate students shadow professors for a semester while taking a three-hour class with Murray on how to instruct a course, and are offered some opportunities to teach.

She also meets with the graduate students once a week when they are teaching a class by themselves.

The program only allows for three graduate students to teach per semester.

Students who have been taught by the graduate students have not had any complaints, Murray said.

She said faculty members were apprehensive before the program came into effect because they had concerns about their own job, but that feeling has subsided.

“It’s gone really well,” Murray said of the program.

As for the biology department, Methven is aware that faculty members are upset by the decision.

“It’s one of those administrative decisions that a chair is sometimes forced to make,” Methven said.

Methven said the faculty has mixed feelings on the change.

“I kind of expected that there would be this kind of reaction,” Methven said.

Poffinbarger said she still plans to fight the decision along with other faculty members.

“That is my only job here: to be a good teacher,” Poffinbarger said. “And I believe that I will not be as effective if this goes through.”