Undergraduate teaching has become a focus for both the University and the School within the past few years. The University recognizes excellence in teaching by Teaching Awards given at Commencement while the Columbia Engineering School Alumni Association gives Distinguished Faculty Teaching Awards at Class Day. To continue the emphasis on the importance of the undergraduate educational experience, three semesters ago Dean Zvi Galil began giving awards for exemplary Teaching Assistants. This semester's awardees reflect the varied backgrounds and specialties typical of the graduate population of the School. Three of the awardees have been named as excellent TAs every semester since the awards began; they all possess a similar approach to being a teaching assistant.
Perhaps the TA with the most experience is Janak Parekh, a computer science major who is a three-time winner. He has been a TA for eight semesters, since his junior year at SEAS. He cites his experience as a peer tutor at Manhasset High School as the place where he learned how to be a good TA.
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| Janak Parekh |
"There are many skills that I could translate from being a peer tutor to being a TA," said Janak. "First, you don't solve the problem for the student but you help them learn to solve the problem for themselves, and that can be frustrating because it is so much easier to follow your natural impulse and just fix the problem."
"I'm beginning to sound like those people who spoke to us the first day at Columbia, it's a process of teaching people to think for themselves," he mused.
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| Giovanni Petrella |
Being responsive to student questions and being on time for office hours were two qualities that all the TAs interviewed agreed are essential. "A good TA re-sponds to e-mails promptly rather than with silence-you need to give a signal that there is some sign of life there and the e-mail hasn't just disappeared," said Giovanni Petrella, a triple winner from IEOR, who came to Columbia after graduating from Universita di Napoli with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. "I wanted to be in New York and I looked at Columbia's program and liked it very much. I had decided I didn't want to be a mechanical engineer and I had always liked finance and modeling and probability. I thought operations research looked exactly like what I wanted."
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| Steffen Kaldor |
Steffen Kaldor, a 1996 mechanical engineering graduate of Boston University who is in the materials science area of applied physics and applied mathematics, became interested in his field following an introductory course in materials science. Speaking from the standpoint of a three-time awardee, he emphasized that the personal attention, the one-on-one informal atmosphere, makes a difference. "The advice I would give students is to take advantage of seeking out the TA. That leads to discussions that go outside the formal lecture and may lead to conversations on research or other areas. I think students will get more out of the courses and be enriched by the interaction," he said.
Among the newcomers to the list of exemplary TAs are Amaria George, a first-year graduate student who received her B.A. in physics from Reed College in Oregon, and Elisabeth Malsch, a 1999 graduate from SEAS in civil engineering.
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| Amaria George |
Amaria, who is in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Math, was a lab TA and a grader at Reed College and likes to interact with students. "Coming to New York was not as big a change as I thought it would be from the West Coast," she said. "It's not the 'big, bad New York City' and I enjoy it. It's more fast paced and I honestly don't have a lot of time to do things now as we push toward the end of the semester, but I am planning to stay in New York this summer and take advantage of it."
Amaria is taking five classes, TA'ing and working with Prof. Irving Herman on plasma etchings on semiconductors. She was thrilled with being named during her first semester as a TA and cites two qualities of a good TA: to explain complex things in several different ways and to give examples.
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| Elisabeth Malsch |
Elisabeth Malsch, a native of Amherst, MA, received her M.S. in May and is working on her Ph.D. in engineering mechanics. "I confess I didn't attend the TA hours as often as I recommend for my students," she said, "but the big advantage is the one-on-one explanation of the subject matter."
All the TAs agreed that it takes a lot of time to do the job but there are rewards. "Sometimes there is one person struggling with the class and, by working to understand what that student is having trouble with, you can make a difference," said Steffen Kaldor.
"I wasn't a TA for the money," said Janak Parekh. "I wanted to be useful and to help students."