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Graduate students constantly inspire me with their dedication and passion. Whether for a subject area, a scientific question, or a career goal, graduate students will persevere to find the answer, finish the experiment, and finish their degree. They will weather whatever storm.
I am a co-president of my graduate student labor union, the Teaching Assistants’ Association. We represent Teaching Assistants (graduate workers who teach classes, grade papers, lead discussion sections) and Research Assistants (graduate workers who do research, often in a laboratory setting) and all other graduate workers.
As elected co-president of the labor union representing TAs and RAs, it is my duty to lead the fight for the conditions that allow us to do what we love while leading lives with dignity. We must protect each other from the exploitation of our dedication, we must, at some point, say “no” while we are so used to saying yes. Especially as graduate programs, including programs in the Biosciences, require more and more unpaid labor.
Graduate students in Microbiology, iPiB, Genetics, Plant Pathology, and BME have previously or are currently expected to assistant teach, or TA, without pay. This requirement comes on top of the Research Assistantship we have; it comes on top of an already full-time job. Unfortunately, research expectations are not explicitly lowered during the semester(s) of unpaid labor requirement, causing undue stress to keep projects going. “I knew students who had more TA work than me […] and they were suffering,” a Biosciences Ph.D. student wrote in response to a union survey.
We are not trained in any of the duties for the TAship; we are not trained how to grade, how to interact with undergraduate students, how to proctor exams, how to answer questions, or how to hold meaningful discussion. It is a real missed opportunity for us, and it’s unfair to our students.
The distribution of difficulty and workload for each TA class is random, you may have hours of work a day, or minutes; you may need to learn a new subject altogether. Students studying bacterial evolution may be required to TA Immunology. Students studying virology get placed in Bioinformatics 563. We are not given any anti-harassment or DEI training before we step into the classroom.
“I also was not able to get any research done when I had to TA a lab course because of how demanding it was,” another Biosciences graduate worker said. Not getting any research done is heartbreaking for those of us who are dedicating our lives to research, we cannot do what we love. It is all the more stressful because we’re evaluated on our research progress during our preliminary exam, where failure of the exam causes dismissal from the degree program.
We are told our unpaid TA requirement is professional development. But one of the unpaid roles this year was actually paid last year, and most of us do not want to go into teaching. I am corrected when I say “TA” to the term “TP,” or “Teaching Practicum.”
The Graduate School’s programs in Plant Pathology, BME, and Microbiology have made the unpaid TA requirement into a course that students would get assessed on as part of our preliminary exam. This impending change has caused anxiety, fear that we could be dismissed for teaching poorly, after receiving no teaching guidance or support.
I believe a TA “course” is an attempt to disguise the requirement’s unpaid labor, but it also serves to separate us scientists away from our colleagues in other disciplines who TA to support themselves.
A labor union is supposed to fight for its members. It is supposed to gather everyone in, and push, together, for raises (like the historic ones we’ve won in the Biosciences), better workplace policies (like the paid leave policy we won), and respect.
Graduate workers get compensated for their labor as TAs and as RAs. That has been the deal, that is why we have a union. How are we, as a labor union representing TAs, supposed to advocate for increased TA wages in Chemistry when somebody in Biochemistry is forced to do the work for free?
So, as the union, we have written and are circulating a letter. bit.ly/bio-letter. We have over 200 signatures, are building majorities and notable endorsements; please sign it. We want the elimination of unpaid TA requirements, to instead have TA work compensated and optional, like it should be.
We have asked the Chancellor to meet with us to discuss this and other issues of concern to graduate workers, who keep the University running. But she said no. She will not take time out of her day to hear from us, what I believe would be a sign of respect to those of us dedicating our creativity, passions, talents, and careers to UW-Madison. All we want is to be able to do the work we fell in love with, and, one day, be appreciated.
