What you don’t know about your teachers

Here at the UW there are two types of teachers: those on the tenure track and those on the non-tenure track.

“Once a faculty member gets tenure they have a job for life — it is very difficult to fire them,” said Mary Pat Wenderoth, a senior lecturer at the UW Teaching Academy.

Teaching assistants (TAs), research assistants, lecturers and instructors are all on the non-tenure track, whereas assistant professors, associate professors and full professors receive the coveted designation.

“A TA is a graduate student at either the master’s or doctorate program level who has been ‘appointed’ by a department, program or center to assist an instructor with a class,” said David Jessup, a former history teaching assistant and current research assistant.

As graduate students at the UW, TAs take classes of their own in addition to having teaching assignments. Since they are students as well, they cannot be promoted.

The reason for having TAs is so graduate students can have experience teaching and grading, Jessup said, while at the same time fund their education. Without the opportunity of a TA position, many graduate students would not be able to continue their degrees.

“For grad students in many disciplines, especially in the humanities, it makes no sense to acquire a lot of debt for the privilege of earning a graduate degree,” he said.

TAs receive a monthly stipend, health insurance and have a portion of their tuition paid for, said former English TA Andrew McNair.

In some departments, such as English or Spanish, TAs are responsible for teaching their own classes without the help of professors. In some cases TAs must choose their own materials and assignments.

“Most TAs are in the process of on-the-job training,” Spanish TA Nathaniel Greenberg said. “It can be a problem for the students, but for TAs it’s a wonderful opportunity. The Spanish department has excellent coordinators, in part because they don’t micromanage our jobs.”

Research assistants (RAs) are similar to TAs, but don’t teach. Rather, they help professors with research. Most RAs are in the sciences, such as physics and biology, but even the English department has RAs.

Instructors are also on the non-tenure track and typically teach temporarily, Jessup said.

Lecturers, also on the non-tenure track, are only responsible to teach, but in order to be promoted they must demonstrate exceptional teaching and give contributions to the UW in the form of TA training, as an undergrad curriculum director or serving on University committees, Wenderoth said.

“The training and experience of lecturers is generally the same as professors,” physics lecturer David Pengra said. “Lecturers have Ph.Ds and most often a record of prior research and teaching, just like professors.”

Since lecturers do not have tenure, they have one-, three- or five-year contracts and need to be rehired at the end of each term.

Research professors, like RAs, are generally in the sciences and mainly do research and rarely teach.

Assistant professors, though at the first position on the tenure track, do not yet have tenure. They eventually become a full professor at the University with a permanent teaching position, Jessup said.

Assistant professors have this designation for six years, according to the UW Academic Human Resources Web site. During their second year, it is decided whether they will be able to finish their six years. In the sixth year, they are reviewed for the position of associate professor.

“At the UW, the tenured faculty in each department vote on the tenure applications submitted by ‘junior faculty’ (assistant professors) in their department,” Jessup said. “They consider the research that the applicants have done since they were hired, the number and quality of their publications, evaluations of their teaching and other factors.”

An associate professor has tenure and can stay an associate professor for the rest of his or her life, but if he or she serves the University well and generate quality research, he or she can be promoted to professor, Jessup said.

“[Professor] is the highest academic title for a teacher at a college,” he said. “The promotion from associate professor to full professor is accompanied by a pay raise, but there is no change in status with regard to tenure.”

A professor generally teaches classes within their specialty that are offered almost every quarter.

“In the physics department, the main difference between the ‘professors’ of all ranks and the other designations is that professors are expected to conduct active research, whereas lecturers and TAs are hired mainly to teach,” Pengra said.

Though there are many semantics between the positions, each member of the UW faculty has one goal: to help his or her students and the University.

“All of these positions have many responsibilities beyond the classroom,” said Patricia Kramer, anthropology research assistant professor.

Kramer sees teachers as advisers to the student community.

“I think that undergraduate students often have a misconception — they see University faculty as teachers,” she said. “We are teachers, but we are also fulltime researchers, administrators and mentors.”

[Reach contributing writer Corrin Cole at development@thedaily.washington.edu.]