Letters to the Editor

A response from the educators on graduate students as teachers

As members of the Princeton community who care a great deal about effective teaching, we would like to reply to columnist Robert Schmidt '03's March 16 column on the preceptorial system and the role of graduate student instructors. In "Educating the Educators," Schmidt argues that the University should "minimize the role that graduate students play" in undergraduate courses. We believe this would do a serious disservice to both graduate and undergraduate education. Providing graduate students more, not less, teaching preparation and classroom experience is the optimal way to improve the preceptorial system.

According to Schmidt, the central problem with precepts at Princeton is the inexperience of the graduate students who lead them. Better to wait until those students become professors, he argues, since only then will they have the experience necessary to teach effectively. But it is in fact in graduate school that many faculty members have their formative experience as teachers, not in the "several years of postdoctoral work" that Schmidt suggests characterize a typical professor's apprenticeship. (Postdoctoral fellowships are not only far from ubiquitous, they are frequently research awards that require little or no teaching responsibilities.) Since graduate school is where many faculty learn to teach — and this is preferable to beginning to learn to teach as a faculty member — we should maximize, rather than minimize, our commitment to "educating the educators."

Princeton has already taken significant steps in this direction. The new McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning provides professional and material resources for both graduate students and faculty. Its outreach program to improve the mentoring of graduate instructors within departments has been taking off in many disciplines, and there are more graduate teaching seminars on campus than ever before. In addition to departmental programs, many faculty meet regularly with their preceptors to discuss the how-to's of teaching — including how to engage students in discussion, how to design effective assignments and (of much concern to Schmidt) how to evaluate and comment on student work. These sessions are also sponsored by the McGraw Center.

Undergraduates can play a role in this process as well. Princeton is rightfully proud of its preceptorial system, the legacy of its 13th president, Woodrow Wilson 1879. Schmidt writes that preceptorials represent an "opportunity to ask questions and to clear up points of confusion." But there is more to the precept than that. As described in the Undergraduate Announcement, the goal of the preceptorial is "to provide an opportunity for wide-ranging exploration of the subject matter of the course in a small group setting." Key to such exploration is preparation and participation — a responsibility that students share equally with their preceptors, whether that preceptor is a graduate student or a faculty member. Ineffective precepts are not the fault solely of the preceptor, regardless of his or her teaching experience.

Schmidt holds up Dartmouth College as a model for Princeton. But Dartmouth, a liberal arts college, does not have a graduate school. As a research university, Princeton has an obligation to its graduate students and to future undergraduates: universities are charged with the task of educating the educators of tomorrow. In many ways, this task is not a burden but a blessing, since faculty members compete against other universities to admit elite graduate students whom they can mentor as top-flight researchers and teachers.

Prospective undergraduates choosing between liberal arts colleges and research universities must weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each system: colleges offer more intimate contact with faculty members and smaller classes, while universities offer cutting-edge libraries, larger departments with more diverse course offerings and a greater percentage of faculty members who are famous within their fields. Princeton's faculty bring prestige to the University through their pioneering and prize-winning contributions to their various disciplines; but the time and energy they spend in such pursuits requires that teaching become a shared responsibility. Such a system not only benefits faculty and graduate students, it can work to the advantage of undergraduates as well. Closer in age and experience to their students, graduate instructors often bring additional energy, excitement and accessibility to their teaching roles. Indeed, learning from a teaching 'team' that includes the professor, the preceptor and even one's peers can be a rich opportunity to hear different points of view and to be challenged within a course.

We recognize that students often feel disappointed when they don't gain a spot in the professor's precept. However, contrary to popular opinion, faculty-led precepts are not always better than graduate student-led ones. Students might also be surprised to learn that graduate student instructors — here and elsewhere — receive roughly the same ratings for teaching as do professors. Many Princeton graduate instructors are already outstanding teachers, as their course evaluations attest. It would thus surely be better to work to bring everyone to a high level than to remove graduate students from the undergraduate classroom. That being said, there are also other ways to interact closely with faculty outside of class. For example, office hours provide an underutilized way for students to get to know their teachers on a more individual level.

There are additional steps the University, for all its commitment to educating its educators, can take. For example, not all departments offer (or require attendance at) graduate teaching seminars or workshops; we should encourage them to do so. Graduate students are not always encouraged by their departments to attend teaching workshops at the McGraw Center; we might do that as well. In short, the more comprehensive preparation — and experience — we can provide this essential group of Princeton teachers, the better the Princeton education will become on every level. Patricia Armstrong, Program Coordinator, McGraw Center Adrian Banner, Assistant in Instruction, Mathematics William Gleason, Associate Professor, English Marah Gubar GS, Assistant in Instruction, English Jacqueline Mintz, Director, McGraw Center