Teaching Effectively with GSI-Faculty Teams

This Occasional Paper summarizes the literature on GSI-faculty relationships in order to offer strategies for both GSIs and faculty to construct effective working partnerships. The nature of GSI-faculty teams varies widely across the University of Michigan, by factors such as size (some faculty supervise many GSIs, while others work with only one GSI), GSI responsibilities (such as grading, holding office hours, leading discussion sections, and studio or clinical work), discipline, and instructor identity.  As a result, this research is contextualized by recommendations drawn from the 2003 Provost’s Seminar on Graduate Students as Teachers, at which over 162 faculty and GSI attendees from fourteen UM schools and colleges strategized about ways to proactively cultivate effective GSI-faculty relationships and address problems when they occur.