At the Statistical Society of Canada annual meeting in St. John's, I spoke about the first year of our UW SAS TA Program that I helped develop.

Abstract:

Most universities have teaching centers that offer programs geared towards the training and development of Teaching Assistants (TAs). Department or discipline specific TA programs, especially in statistics and actuarial science, tend to be scarce and/or informal. In 2023 the University of Waterloo’s Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science created the TA Program which encompasses all aspects related to graduate teaching assistantships and offers the Foundations in University Teaching in Statistics and Actuarial Science certificate training program. Our program works in collaboration with the university’s Centre for Teaching Excellence to train incoming and current graduate TAs by providing sequential levels of training with a unique focus on discipline-specific courses and material. Our goal is to prepare graduate students with the skills to confidently and successfully perform TA duties including proctoring, grading, facilitating tutorials, creating and delivering material for an in-class lecture, and more. 

In this talk, we will share details about the creation and structure of our TA Program, highlight key observations gleaned from its first year of operation, explore future goals for the program, and discuss potential implementation at other universities/departments.