UCLA teaching assistants support semester system

By Peijean Tsai
DAILY BRUIN [email protected]

As discussion continues over whether UCLA should switch from a
quarter to a semester calendar system, graduate students,
particularly those who are teaching assistants, favor the semester
system.

Depending on whether the course being taught by a graduate
student is a lab or a discussion section, teaching assistants could
benefit by the additional time for physical setup of laboratory
experiments or demonstrations. Teaching assistants could also offer
more office hours for undergraduate students, said Charles Harless,
the president of the Graduate Students Association.

Some teaching assistants, including John Nagarah, who supports a
semester system, feel that those who would benefit most would be
the undergraduate students they teach.

“(My) class in general needs to be slowed down,”
said John Nagarah, who has taught Chemistry 20 series discussions
since fall.

“Rushing (students) through a semester’s work in a
quarter frustrates them and turns them away from advanced science
and math courses,” he said.

While the structure of his discussion section would not change
much, students would benefit from the extra time that would allow
for more discussion of each topic being taught, Nagarah said.

“Education on the quarter system is like an MTV
education,” Harless said.

“(Instructors) throw material on you and you just memorize
it. College education should be about absorbing or understanding
material,” he said.

Expanding the length of a course section would not only give
graduate students more time to teach, and students more time to
learn, but also lessens the focus that undergraduates have on
“grade grubbing” because of the short duration of the
quarter, said Richard Scheelings, a graduate student who has taught
economics discussion sections for two years at UCLA.

Out of the 1,448 graduate students who voted in the GSA
election, 47.2 percent favored the semester system, while 37.2
percent favored the current quarter system, and 15.6 percent
indicated that they were indifferent.

This issue of how graduate students who are teaching assistants
might benefit from switching to a semester system was one of the
issues covered by Harless at a meeting of the Academic Senate
Friday.

The Academic Senate is currently working on a report to consider
the calendar change and its affect on graduate students,
undergraduates and faculty.