P691G – Graduate Student Professional Development Seminar

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Why a Graduate-Student Professional Development Seminar?

Graduate students are facing an important transition from undergraduate students to budding researchers and faculty colleagues. This transition requires both a change in personal identity, from student to colleague, as well as the development of certain professional skills. Our course looks to use training for our graduate students’ roles as teaching assistants to facilitate this change of identity and to help develop skills helpful both as graduate student research colleagues and in their subsequent careers including:

• Conveying information effectively
• Understanding issues of identity and diversity
• Developing literature research skills
• Time management

This 1-credit course was offered for the first time in the Fall 0f 2017 as a required course for all incoming graduate students. 

This course arises from our attendance at the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative National TA Workshop at Georgia Institute of Technology from 5-7 June 2017. At the workshop, we had an opportunity to work with other chemistry and physics departments under the tutelage of experts in developing effective programs for graduate teaching assistant (GTA) training.

Goals of the Seminar

1. Most of what UMass TAs do is facilitation of groups working in teams (Team-Based Courses, Labs, Office Hours). Thus, we want our TAs to be effective in facilitating students working in teams to solve problems.
2. We want our TAs to develop a strong GTA self-identity and an explicit awareness of the transferable skills that being a GTA provides.
3. We feel that the GTA seminar provides an excellent context for the exposure to issues of diversity and power dynamics with which new GTAs may be unfamiliar.

More Information

This page provides rather detailed information about the program to allow other faculty in other departments take and use the materials best suited to their own circumstances.

• About the Structure of Our Program and a Note on Vocabulary
• Orientation
  • Thinking about what it means to be a Ph.D. student
    • A one hour session at the beginning of the second day of orientation
  • Being ready for day 1! Review of UMass students, GTA assignments, responsibilities, roles, and some practice facilitating groups
    • 90-minutes on the third, and last day, of orientation
• Week-by-week during the semester
  • Week 1 – Defining classroom culture and exploring hopes and anxieties for the TA experience
  • Week 2 – Identifying characteristics of good GTAs
  • Week 3 – Understanding the differences between expert and novice problem solvers and helping students move to more expert like behaviors
  • Week 4 – Principles of assessment and how to grade quickly, consistently, and effectively
  • Week 5 – Understanding the different epistemic games students play while solving problems and how that information can be used to identify appropriate moments for intervention
  • Week 6 – Ask Me Anything (AMA) with a graduate student panel
  • Week 7 – Thinking about how to evaluate teaching and begin a project of both observing and being observed by experienced TAs
  • Week 8 – Thinking about some potentially challenging situations arising from the saliency of some aspects of the instructor’s identity
  • Week 9 – Thinking about some potentially challenging situations arising from the saliency of some aspects of the students’ identity
  • Week 10 – So much to do, how to manage it all? (Time management)
  • Week 11 – Designing presentations for in-class and your professional life using backward design
  • Week 12 – Giving presentations: teaching personas and stage presence
  • Week 13 – Ask Me Anything (AMA) With faculty and experienced graduate student panel
• Summary of Protocols for Common Activities

Project Leaders

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