This article offers a rigorous and researched look at how consumer rhetorics form first-year college students' understandings about life at the university. Examined in the context of consumer culture, students' narratives about university life illustrate how they marshal, appropriate, and deploy consumerist metaphors and to what ends. Using…

Presents results from a study that focused on undergraduate teaching assistants (UTAs) using in-depth written interviews with UTAs; interviews with faculty members/instructors who work with UTAs; and questionnaires from students in classes that use UTAs. States that UTAs can be useful in promoting active learning. (CMK)

Describes three active learning strategies for use in a teaching assistant (TA) training program that can enhance graduate students' teaching skills: (1) in-class activities; (2) written assignments (journals, written exercises, and teaching portfolios); and (3) modeling and observation (watching versus performing teaching behaviors). (CMK)