Advocating ME department set up the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award

As a teaching assistant in Mechanical Engineering department, I advocate that our department set up the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award to recognize the excellent TAs for their distinguished contribution to students. As everybody knows, a good teaching assistant is not only the glue that can hold the class together, but also is the one who can provide valuable support to professors; meanwhile, I noticed that the Chemical Engineering department rewards their TAs every year, and also numerically highly ranked reputable universities, such as Stanford University, Harvard University, etc. implement similar awards as well. So in my opinion, I suggest that our department establish an award to acknowledge outstanding graduate teaching assistants for their contributions to the teaching tasks in the ME department. There are several reasons why we need to award outstanding teaching assistants.

First of all, by establishing this award, the TAs’ initiative will be greatly elevated; once the TAs are full of passion in their teaching mission, the students can benefit greatly. People are inclined to contribute more to gain achievement; this award can provoke them to be more helpful to students. As student evaluations of TAs are consulted, in order to perform better, there is no doubt the TAs will be more responsible to students. They will prepare class discussions sufficiently, and grade the homework more carefully. Therefore, the students will have more responsible teaching assistants in class, and also they will obtain more effective learning recourse from their teaching assistants. High level TAs get undergraduate students to understand the subjects on a different level, which makes them have better judgment in the real world problems and pay more acute attention to details once they are out of academia.

Moreover, I think this awarding is a process that recognizes TAs with a record of outstanding contributions over time; this will definitely be highlighted on graduate students’ resumes. Once the graduated students are looking for a job which is related to academia, the one who has an Outstanding TA Award can obtain a greater advantage over others; moreover, this award can verify their aptitude in the professional world even when they are looking for a job in other areas.

Last but not least, having better, more qualified TAs can also raise the bar of the department. TAs carry a pivotal role in our department in terms of giving discussions and lecturing designated courses. More qualified TAs ensure a better conduction of those courses and a more efficient way in conveying knowledge to students. Personally speaking, for the sake of rewards, the TAs will not only contribute more to the department, but also can build up themselves better, from their teaching experience, since all of the courses will reinforce the foundation of their knowledge.

To sum up, based on the reasons aforementioned, I can only foresee the advantages of having the awards, but not a single drawback from this. Therefore I suggest that our department establish the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.  (Lingjuan)