Steps to make the teaching assistant system work better for all concerned. (AA)

Uses results from a survey of students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin to criticize emphases within the English department and the university as a whole, particularly the heavy use of teaching assistants in undergraduate instruction. (AA)

Indicates that stipends for teaching assistants (TAs) are larger now than they have been and that the number of TAs is still considerable. (AEA)

Makes suggestions for the improvement of college teacher training. Argues that, as college faculty assist teaching assistants, the college faculty's teaching should be positively affected as it becomes more self-conscious, collegial, and even collaborative. (RS)

Discusses how English departments, which employ a substantial number of teaching assistants and adjuncts, will make progress toward solving some of their problems by recognizing that students can major in English and the humanities as they have been traditionally conceived and find professionally and financially rewarding employment. Suggests that…

Discusses how the author learned to make a research assistant (RA) a part of the administrative package. Shares her ambition to make available good teaching editions of out-of-print novels by Victorian women writers. Suggests coediting new editions of a literary text with RAs and/or post-doctorate students. (SG)

Describes several ways in which graduate students may be convinced that their teaching of freshman composition is complementary to their study of literature and concludes that the place to begin to change the negative attitude toward composition is in this training of graduate students in English. (JM)

Examines the composition of the faculty and instructional staff in English, 1996-97 and examines the average percentage of undergraduate course sections taught. Analyzes the staffing of undergraduate courses in baccalaureate-, master's-, and doctorate-granting institutions. Considers the use of full-and part-time adjunct faculty members and the…

Deplores the widespread practice of having graduate students with no teaching experience teach composition classes. Advocates (1) having tenured faculty teach one composition class per year, and (2) requiring graduate students to take a course in teaching composition before teaching it. (SR)

Urges that PhD-granting departments consider shrinking their graduate programs, thus reducing overproduction of PhDs and, by reducing the number of sections taught by graduate assistants, perhaps providing new tenure-track positions. Urges also that PhD-granting departments examine staffing practices in lower-level offerings and commit to engaging…

Describes how an encounter in a graduate poetry seminar with a teacher when the author was a graduate student and instructor helped the author to reevaluate his pedagogical stances and classroom practices. Notes that being a teacher and a student simultaneously made him acutely aware of the asymmetry on both sides of that educational relation. (RS)

Describes a graduate course in English that brought together parts of graduate education that are too often left isolated from one another by forming a "teaching company" of graduate teaching assistants who simultaneously grappled with the same set of pedagogical and literary issues on a weekly basis. (AEA)

Lists for comparison the average of pre- and post-MA salaries and stipends per course paid by 68 universities. (CRH)

Considers a variety of topics, including the shortage of jobs for graduates of English doctoral programs, uses of graduate assistants, academic standards for graduate degrees, English department hiring practices, and ways faculty members can educate and be educated by new young instructors. (GW)

Asserts that most English departments are product oriented in their hiring and faculty evaluation, therefore the slow transition from product to process oriented writing instruction is not surprising. (SRT)