In this article, overlapping, disparate stories from a university team teaching the Art and Design Education Lab course during the COVID-19 pandemic are presented in order as teaching faculty, academic librarian, and research and teaching assistants. The reflections from the teaching team reveal their COVID-19 pandemic responses as research, in…

Graduate students face an array of choices when evaluating compensation-and-benefits packages that make comparisons difficult. A "Chronicle" survey shows that the offers to teaching assistants and research assistants vary widely. Some institutions cover 100 percent of graduate students' tuition, while others waive only a portion. It is possible to…

Describes how New York University has become the first private institution to recognize the right of teaching assistants to bargain collectively and possible implications for other private institutions. (EV)

This paper describes the use of undergraduate teaching and research assistants in the Psychology Department of a university. This program creates additional resources for the department and provides mentoring opportunities for students who are interested in going to graduate school. Hiring and training undergraduates to be teaching assistants is…

Describes the effects of and universities' response to a recent National Labor Relations Board decision which defined graduate assistants at private institutions as employees, giving them the right to organize, collectively bargain, and strike. Includes a sidebar on the effects of the graduate student union at the University of Iowa. (EV)

In the US, graduate assistants are an integral part of a university's educational and operational climate. Graduate assistants provide teaching, research or administrative services to the educational enterprise in exchange for professional experience and a financial stipend. Recent strikes of graduate teaching assistants at New York University…

Leaders of the movement to unionize graduate teaching/research assistants are learning organizing tactics through the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions, and plotting strategies for a critical campaign year. Graduate students at 20 universities already have collective bargaining units, students at 15 institutions are campaigning for union…

Provided is information on stipends from the last 3 surveys for 12 engineering disciplines. Notes that in 1987-88 the highest GTA and GRA stipends were awarded in the same field; materials science/metallurgical engineering. (MVL)

The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students has passed resolutions calling for reforms intended to improve the lives of graduate students, including increasing health care and making faculty and institutions accountable for better advising. Although the association is not dominated by union activists, the issue of collective…

The Hispanic Border Leadership Institute (HBLI) is a consortium of six Southwestern universities that promotes the improvement of education for Hispanics at all levels, K-16, particularly on the U.S.-Mexico border. HBLI seeks to bring about systematic change in education by designing new approaches to the doctoral preparation programs of…

This newsletter theme issue focuses on unionization of graduate student assistants at institutions of higher education. The first article, "Graduate Assistants and Unionization" by Frank R. Annunziato, points out that more than 21,000 graduate student assistants at public sector colleges/universities are represented by unions in eight…

A long-time teaching assistant and now adjunct faculty member at a major university looks at the forces both for and against unionization on campus and under state law, the theoretical but not practical support of faculty and administration, the value of unions for teaching assistants, and the nature of the graduate student-college relationship.…

The graduate student orientation program conducted at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) is described, and supplementary orientation materials are provided. The orientation program incorporates the following thrusts: instructional and research programming, personal and professional development, departmental programming, social interaction, and…