Like many new assistant professors when I arrived at the university I was assigned classes to teach. The underlying assumption was that since I had an advance degree, publications, a record of grant support, and experiences as a student, I was qualified to walk into a graduate or undergraduate classroom and “teach”. My actual teaching experience was limited; I had been an undergraduate teaching assistant for a laboratory course, spent one semester as graduate teaching assistant for two laboratory sections, mentored undergraduates in a laboratory setting and taught several very small (less than six students) honor seminar courses as a researcher. My perceptions about teaching were classical: teaching was the delivery of information in the form of a well prepared lecture with the goal of covering the material. I had never taken a course or seminar about teaching, nor thought about student learning, and I was completely unaware of the many useful pedagogies that were available to me. Despite these shortcomings, I received adequate teaching evaluations and even some teaching awards. My story is not unusual and the vast majority of new professors – both here and elsewhere – would have similar tales.

At UMD there are more than 2500 graduate teaching assistants (Fall 2008, IRPA data, a number that is slightly higher than the number of regular faculty).

Today there is an increased awareness of the central roles that teaching and student learning play within research universities and increased accountability for faculty teaching performance. Increasingly, universities in England, Australia, Hong Kong, Scandinavia and elsewhere are strongly encouraging or requiring new faculty to engage in professional development for teaching. One approach for addressing the need for new faculty who are trained and well equipped to meet the expectations of excellence in teaching, scholarship and service is to begin this training as an integrated part of students’ graduate education.

In the 1990’s through the efforts of US professional societies and funding agencies there emerged an awareness that graduate education should include opportunities for students to develop and hone their understandings of student learning and teaching skills before they became professors. The Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) [http://www.preparing-faculty.org/] initiative (1993-2003) involved dozens of doctorial institutions and hundreds of partner institutions and provided training and professional development for several thousand future faculty. Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are an important component of the instructional staff and a resource for the university. Graduate teaching assistants provide the human power necessary to meet the academic teaching loads that are present at all large state universities. Often the instructors that first and second year students interact with the most are graduate teaching assistants. At UMD there are more than 2500 graduate teaching assistants (Fall 2008, IRPA data, a number that is slightly higher than the number of regular

faculty). At UMD, graduate teaching assistants serve a variety of teaching roles, from assisting in grading and general class administration, to overseeing laboratories and recitation sections to autonomously teaching classes where they are responsible for all aspects of the course. Across the campus there is a wide spectrum of levels of support provided by colleges, departments and individual instructors for their graduate teaching assistants with respect to their teaching duties. In some departments professional development for academic teaching is part of the departmental culture and their graduate programs ensure that in addition to the expected discipline scholarship requirements graduates are well prepared to teach the next generation of students in the discipline. In other department graduate students are left to their own initiative to find ways to develop their expertise as university teachers and in rare cases advisors and departments actively discourage students for such activity (the rationale is that teaching and learning how to teach effectively takes time away for the important work of research).

The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) has a long history of supporting professional development of graduate students for enhancing teaching and student learning. Over the last five-years the number of programs that CTE provides to the campus for graduate student professional development has increased and we (CTE) are an important national model for this areas of the academe. CTE’s efforts to provide opportunities for graduate student to develop and document their teaching skills and efforts has been possible because of the support of the Graduate School, the Provost’s office and Undergraduate Studies, as well as the many faculty and graduate students who volunteer time and expertise. CTE’s signature graduate student professional development program is the University Teaching and Learning Program (UTLP; http://www.cte.umd.edu/ UTLP/index.html). This self-paced

One of the aspects that make research universities unique are the presence of bright enthusiastic graduate students who come in as students and leave as colleagues.  

program is open to all graduate students and involves workshops, reflections, observations, a graduate class on university teaching and learning, a project, and the development of a teaching portfolio. Students who complete the program receive a notation on their graduate transcript signifying they have completed a program on university teaching. This notation plus the products that are the outcomes of the students’ UTLP work are valuable assets for graduates entering the job market. Several departments who traditionally have had strong teaching components embedded in their graduate programs (EDHD, Woman’s Studies, Psychology, Spanish and Portuguese) have partnered with CTE,

so that students in these departments who complete a comparable set of UTLP requirements within the departmental program receive the transcript notation. In addition to the UTLP program, CTE in partnership with the Graduate school has developed two new programs aimed at professional development for graduate teaching assistants; the CTE-Lilly Graduate Teaching Fellow Program, [http://www.cte.umd.edu/programs
/graduate/lillygraduate/index.html; also see Heather Brown's article in this newsletter], and the International Teaching Fellowship (ITF) Program for International Graduate Teaching Assistants, [http://www.cte.umd.edu/ITF/]. All three of these programs involve graduate teaching assistant learning communities and provide mechanisms and forums that enable graduate students to meet and interact with peers outside their immediate department. In addition to these formal programs, CTE provides departmental workshops for graduate teaching assistants, a regular workshop series on teaching and learning [http://cte.umd.edu/teaching/work
shops/index.html] and orientations for new graduate students. An underlying goal for all of these initiative is to strengthen graduate student perceptions and understandings of the scholarly role that teaching plays within the academe. For each of the past five years CTE, with support from Undergraduate Studies, has taken dozens graduate teaching assistants to the region Lilly East Conferences on Teaching and Learning [http://lillyconferences.com/dc/ default.shtml] where they present, engage with experts, build connections and witness the scholarship of teaching in a professional setting.

One of the aspects that make research universities unique are the presence of bright enthusiastic graduate students who come in as students and leave as colleagues. We owe our graduate students the opportunities to develop the skills and credentials that they will need to succeed in an academic market place that is highly competitive. Everywhere there are increasing expectations that universities provide high quality educational experiences for all students. To effectively meet this challenge universities need teaching staff that is informed, engaged and willing to go beyond traditional pedagogies and embrace new technologies and way for teaching and learning. CTE by providing a stable of programs for professional development of graduate teaching assistants address the current need for excellence in teaching and helps to lay the foundation for the next generation of university faculty who will be expected to do more (often with less) and be great teachers as well as great researchers. Information on all of CTE’s professional development programs for graduate students and faculty in available on our web site [http://www.cte.umd.edu/index.html] or by contacting us at cte@umd.edu.