We really wanted to get back to that as our main focus, Coakley said of the decision. Heidi Zommer, an RA from Taunton, Mass., has been told that as a graduate student, she will not be allowed to resume her position next year. At the beginning of February, I was told that I would be grandfathered into the program and I took that as a verbal contract. Last month I was told that I could not return to the program, said Zommer. The difficulty of having graduate student RA's lies in conflicting schedules, said Coakley.
Graduate students have a lot of responsibilities to fulfill with teaching and attending classes.
As RA's they have to go to staff meetings that sometimes aren't until ten at night and be available to meet with their residents. There is difficulty in being an deal RA, not because the students arrant doing a good job, but because we've found that their schedules conflict with ours. Undergraduate RA's have the same type of schedule as their residents Coakley said. Associate Professor and Director of the Physical Therapy Program Dr. Michael Emery works closely with graduate students and believes the situation is a new challenge for the University. The underlying issue is that the University needs to find a way to use graduate students on campus for the talents they bring to the University, said Emery.