Brian Lindaman came to Kansas University to be a student, but he spends much of his time in front of the classroom.

Lindaman is one of more than 900 graduate teaching assistants at KU who teach between 20 and 30 percent of classes each semester. But just because he’s a fellow student doesn’t mean undergraduates don’t respect him as a teacher.

BRIAN LINDAMAN, a graduate teaching assistant in the math department at Kansas University, teaches a calculus class during summer school. Lindaman is one of more than 900 GTAs at KU.

“I don’t think students pay attention so much to who’s a GTA and who’s a professor,” he said.

Starting this fall, GTAs will have an extra incentive their pay will significantly increase over the next three years. GTAs and the Board of Regents are expected to approve a contract later this month.

Balancing act

GTAs must balance the challenges of teaching preparing for classes, grading papers, meeting with students with their own studies.

“We are students first before we’re teachers,” Lindaman said. “It’s important for us to maintain our own studies. It’s about finding the balance. It’s easy to get too involved in the teaching.”

Lindaman, a master’s degree student in mathematics, teaches Precalculus, Calculus I and Calculus II. GTAs typically teach about two classes each semester.

And Lindaman said most of the students he’d had in class had treated him like any other professor.

“I’ve found them to be very respectful,” he said. “I’ve had some problems getting them motivated and excited about learning math, but that’s everybody professor or GTA.”

Contract talks

KU and the Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition, the union that represents KU’s GTAs, came to an agreement on a tentative contract in July.

The contract would increase by 10 percent each year the amount of money KU spends on salaries teaching assistants. The amount has been about $10 million; it would jump to $13 million.

The contract also for the first time sets minimum salaries for GTAs. The minimum will be $8,000 for the first year of the contract, followed by $9,000 and $10,000 the following two years.

The money will come from part of the 25.2 percent tuition increase approved by regents for this fall. Negotiations on the contract began in September 2000.

The two sides also agreed on seeking an increase in the level of state health care coverage from the Kansas Health Care Commission.

“The vast majority of things we wanted we got,” said Robert Vodicka, GTAC’s lead negotiator. “It’s taken a long time, but we got them.”

KU officials seemed equally pleased.

“It’s been a long process,” said David Shulenburger, provost and executive vice chancellor. “Without the tuition increases, we wouldn’t be at this point. I’m just thrilled to death.”

‘Diversity and community’

The salary helped attract Vicente Gomis to become a GTA. The doctoral student has taught Spanish to undergraduates for two years.

“It pays money, and you’ve got to pay for rent and food,” he said. “And the tuition waiver that’s a lot of money, as well.”

But Gomis, from Spain, said he had found another benefit to teaching it helps him learn.

“People think since we’re native speakers, we speak Spanish and we know everything,” he said. “And that’s wrong. There are many things you have to review. You have to study before you can teach it.”

Gomis said some undergraduates didn’t give GTAs the same respect they gave faculty members.

“I’ve heard of undergraduate students who say they pay a lot of money for tuition and they deserve to have a faculty member teach their classes,” he said. “That would be impossible.”

James Woelfel, chairman of the humanities and western civilization department, agreed. He said GTAs allowed the department to teach the 2,000 students enrolled in its classes each semester.

“There aren’t enough faculty to go around,” he said.

The 21 GTAs in Woelfel’s department either lead discussion groups with 20 students or teach sections with 35 students. Almost all KU students are required to take western civilization classes.