3G: Supporting professional development through teaching assistantships (Room 112)

Abstract

Teaching Assistants (TAs) for Statistics courses pursue diverse career paths, with academia being the aim for a shrinking minority. TAs who will not directly apply their experiences to careers in teaching may struggle to see their TA duties as an opportunity to hone skills for their future careers. As a result, some may lack motivation for their position and be disinterested in TA training sessions. In this interactive session, we will engage participants in a discussion about how teaching assistantships can be a medium for professional development for more than academia. We will give participants an opportunity to discuss their experiences–as a TA or working with TAs–reflecting the varied contexts and roles TAs serve at each of our institutions. We will brainstorm how teaching assistant experiences equip all of our graduates for their future roles, regardless of their career path. Together, we will then develop strategies that we can employ as we support our TAs through both pre-semester trainings and ongoing feedback and mentorship. We hope to 1) re-orient perspectives around assistantships as opportunities to develop transferable skills for anyone working with and communicating about data and 2) move away from a one-size-fits-all model for assistantships and instead embrace assignments and roles that are catered toward the individual TA. No technology is required to participate in this session.