No teaching assignment is made unless both the GTA and the department are comfortable with the assignment, and in all cases, assignment of teaching duties is made only after students have selected their own courses of study. To ease the task for all instructors, the department provides detailed daily syllabi for all freshman and sophomore level courses. The instructor's responsibilities include adjustment of the syllabus to conform to the calendar for a particular semester, preparation and delivery of lectures, and creation, administration, and grading of tests. In addition, several faculty members are always available to answer questions and to give advice about any aspect of teaching these courses. Also, faculty associated with courses the new GTAs may teach discuss the goals and syllabi of those courses.
Every effort is made to help new GTAs feel comfortable with their new roles.
By way of recognition of these accomplishments, each year the Department awards an outstanding new GTA and an outstanding experienced GTA, as judged by a panel of faculty, a cash prize. The competition for these awards is always strong. One of our GTAs recently was honored at the university level with an Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award by the Chancellor. Other GTAs have been honored with university-wide fellowship grants and prizes in student paper competitions at sectional mathematical society meetings.