When Stephen Warner was an undergraduate student, he was “scared to death” to talk to his professors.

If he was having trouble in a class, Warner, a graduate student studying stream ecology, said he would go to the teacher’s assistants for help.

As a graduate assistant responsible for teaching a biology lab, Warner said he thinks he is able to connect with his students better than most professors.

Vincent Hustad, a graduate student studying fungal ecology, said he feels the same way.

“We’re really not even five years older than most of these guys,” Hustad said. “I think that makes them feel more at ease with us.”

Hustad and Warner both teach BIO 1001, an introductory lab for non-majors.

Recently, faculty members within the biology department have voiced concern about the department deciding to use graduate assistants for supervised instruction. The decision to implement that program happened in April 2007.

Hustad and Warner said they do not think the controversy within their department has had much effect on them.

“It’s separate from this,” Hustad said. “A lot of the controversy has been over the implementation, rather than the execution. I haven’t really seen anything negative between me and the other graduate students. They have been completely supportive.”

Preparing for labs

Hustad said lesson preparation for the labs is a weeklong process.

The teaching graduate assistants meet with lecture instructors and Bud Fischer, the graduate program coordinator, every Monday. The group discusses what will happen in lab the coming week and makes sure the material between lab and lecture sessions matches up.

After the Monday planning session, the graduate students look through the labs individually and decide how to present the information to their class.

“I have a lab manual from last semester and I made marks where we had issues before,” Hustad said. “So I look over the problems that weren’t covered last semester and just try to think of different ways to make more sense.”

During the labs, faculty members stop in to make sure everything is running smoothly, Hustad and Warner said.

Last semester the graduate assistants were evaluated up to three times on their presentation, clarity, communication and other teaching factors.

The lab courses are taught on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

On Friday, the students meet with the program coordinator again to discuss how the labs went. In addition to sharing ways to improve the labs, the graduate students are given reading assignments on teaching each week. These readings focus on topics such as how to encourage critical thinking and diversifying teaching methods, Warner said. The assignments are also discussed on Friday.

“I never realized until I started this program all of the literature that was out there, as far as really helping you become a better educator,” Hustad said.

The road to teaching a lab course

Before being able to instruct a lab course, graduate students have to spend one year as a teacher’s assistant. Warner said during this time, the graduate students observe the labs and how the professor teaches the material to students.

The week before they started teaching, Warner said the graduate students learned different teaching philosophies, how to handle a classroom and what common problems arise in class from a retired professor.

Warner said the graduate assistants are required to attend faculty development courses offered through the university at least twice a semester.

Although Hustad and Warner said they felt well prepared when it came time to teach in Fall 2007, they admit they were quite nervous.

“Both of my parents are teachers in high school and both of them say the first day of school is always nerve-racking,” Warner said. “I mean you’ve got 32 new faces and names to learn. But after that, we’re completely comfortable with the students.”

Although Hustad will start at the University of Illinois to earn his Ph.D., he said he would eventually like to teach.

“I think that a true scholar shares their knowledge with people and that there’s no more true, scholarly thing that you can do than teach people,” he said. “It is actually really cool seeing that ‘ah ha’ moment in students when they finally get something.”

When he started the graduate program, Warner said he wasn’t sure if he would eventually want to become a teacher. He decided to use the opportunity offered by the biology department to find out if teaching was what he wanted to do after receiving his master’s degree.

“It’s not something I necessarily think I want to continue for the rest of my life,” he said. “Becoming a manager or stream biologist, I’m going to be in charge of educating the public and communicating with interns and teaching skills I think are going to be vital.”

Christopher Hanlon, coordinator of English department graduate studies, said he thinks graduate students across campus have been affected by this controversy, creating misconceptions about graduate assistants teaching.

“When I hear some faculty lashing out and swinging blindly at the quality of teaching of other GAs in other departments- departments they don’t know anything about- that bothers me a great deal,” Hanlon said. “I’ve heard generalizations being made about GA teachers on campus that just make me wince.”

While some have argued having graduate assistants teaching goes against what Eastern advertises, Hanlon, Hustad and Warner said the experience is essential, even for those who aren’t going on to teach.

“It can’t be the exact same experience,” Hustad said. “But it can sometimes be better in some aspects, like with teacher-student relationships.”

Some have compared the amount and level of graduate assistant teaching at Eastern to that at U of I.

“It upsets me because I know some of the GA teachers in our department are really some of the finest teachers I know,” Hanlon said. “You know, they can’t defend themselves, they don’t have a voice or a microphone like faculty do on this campus.”

Barbara Harrington can be reached at 581-7942 or at bjharrington@eiu.edu.

The biological sciences building is comprised of a main building with classrooms and offices, as well as an annex connected by a bridge over the garden entrance. (Bryce Peake

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