The Many Roles of a TA

Section Contents The TA Balancing Act The TA as Student The TA as Teacher The Instructor-Student Liaison Role The International TA The Distance Education TA The TA as Union Member The TA as GSA Member In the Classroom . . .

The TA as GSA Member (Graduate Students' Association) (Source: Samantha Bogoros, Graduate Students' Association, University of Guelph) A Message From the GSA Executive The GSA is the graduate student central government at the University of Guelph. All registered full- and part-time grad students are members. The GSA provides many services for graduate students, including the administration of the health plan, the grad student travel fund, and the emergency child care fund. A Board of Directors consisting of an elected executive and representatives from each department operates the GSA. The Board holds open meetings each month; the times and locations of these meetings are listed in the GSA dayplanner (available at the GSA office) so please attend. If you would like to be a voting member of the Board, we encourage you to become your department's representative. We also have an international students' and a CUPE 3913 representative on the Board. The GSA represents the Guelph graduate student body to the University's administration through Senate, the Board of Graduate Studies, and direct liaison with senior officials. We are also represented on a diverse number of university committees dealing with policy formation and issues of concern to graduate students. If you are interested in University committee work, it is not mandatory that you be a board member and there are differing levels of time commitment for different committees. We are also affiliated with the Canadian Federation of Students (Local 62) - both national and provincial, the National Graduate Council, and the Ontario Graduate Association. We work actively every year to support CFS campaigns and lobby the University administration, and the provincial and federal governments, on such issues as tuition levels, research and funding support, OSAP, student debt, day-care, and international student concerns. We are also here to support individual graduate students with specific problems such as conflicts with faculty members or with the administration, racial, sexual or any form of harassment, or to direct you to the appropriate resources on campus including the GSA Compassionate Fund. We also own the Grad Lounge, located on L-5 North, University Centre. The Grad Lounge is the only bar on campus that is entirely owned and operated by students, for students, and run at a not-for-profit level.  FMI For your free copy of the GSA Daytimer, to become a Board Rep or sit on a committee, or for more information about the CFS, NGC, OGA (and their campaigns), please contact: GSA Office UC 531, Ext. 56685 Web: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~gsa/ Email: eangus@uoguelph.ca Previous Section | Next Section