TAs dissatis?ed by appreciation event

Free barbecue and the opportunity to mingle with other teaching assistants lured Carlos Valencia to a teaching-assistant appreciation luncheon last Tuesday.

But what the graduate student didn’t expect to find was an event that left him and many other TAs hungry, frustrated and questioning how much the University appreciates its teaching assistants.

“We joked that it was kind of like TA humiliation,” said Valencia, a teaching assistant in the Department of Romance Languages.

Valencia said the event wasn’t indicative of his career as a TA at UNC.

Still, when he arrived to the event about an hour late, he said there was no cole slaw, a half-empty container of baked beans and two pitchers of warm tea.

Minutes later, he said, all the food was gone.

“I saw a lot of people that were almost offended,” he said.

The event, sponsored by student government and the Office of the Provost, was an effort to raise morale among TAs.

Unprecedented attendance led to the food shortage, said Brian Phelps, chairman of student government’s Academic Affairs Committee.

Officials prepared for 500 people last year and wound up with an excess of food. As a result, Phelps said, they planned for 300 people to attend this year.

Despite the lack of food, UNC officials say, they have made strides to improve TAs’ quality of life.

In 2003, a report from the Teaching Assistant Advisory Task Force found that TAs’ salaries were not competitive with those at other universities, sparking the need for additional benefits and salary increases to attract more graduate students.

Provost Robert Shelton said he anticipates using tuition revenue to raise the minimum TA stipend by $1,000 next year — bringing the total to $12,000 per semester. Officials increased the minimum stipend last year by $1,000.

“As graduate students, they are fundamental to the whole research and scholarship mission of the University,” Shelton said.

“As TAs, they really carry out a lot of the class instructional responsibilities. They really are at the core of what this University does.”

Phelps said that for future events, officials will work on finding a better way to gauge the number of TAs planning to attend. That could include the creation of a TA listserv, which would allow leaders to publicize their events in places other than graduate student lists.

Phelps said he received seven complaints about the event from TAs. “The important thing to denote is that there are seven upset TAs out of thousands at this school,” he said. “It was a successful event.”

For his part, Valencia said TAs have things to be thankful for.

“When I first started (in 1996), we did not have free health insurance, laptops or computers in our offices,” Valencia said. “Now we do.”

 

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.