Reporter Volume 25, No.17 February 17, 1994

By ANN WHITCHER
Reporter Editor

UB and the SUNY system in general can play a key role in establishing
standards for GA and TA professional development, Richard S. Jarvis,
SUNY vice provost for academic programs and research, said here
Monday.
	Jarvis, a former UB faculty member and Fredonia State College
administrator, addressed a discussion meeting on graduate student
professional development at the Center for Tomorrow. Sponsors were the
Graduate School and the Office of Teaching Effectiveness. 
	In many ways, Jarvis said, fostering professional development
among graduate students is directly tied to UB's self-interest as a
research university. For one thing, he noted, "research universities
are having a tough time" combating the general assertion, however
ill-founded, that undergraduate teaching is suffering at the hands of
the research mission. In Albany, said Jarvis, this contention is
"unremitting and getting worse." 
	Such an attitude is furthered by the lack of postgraduate
research background among legislators, their staffs and other
decision-makers in Albany. This fact, said Jarvis, plays into a
"fundamental misunderstandmpus. The military versities solely as time
spent at a lectern, with little awareness of the time spent training
graduate students that transcends the classroom. 
	The ingredients of professional development for graduate
students "are no mystery," said Jarvis, and involve a package of
orientation sessions, video presentations, and the like. What's
missing, he said, is follow-up in the second and third year of
graduate work, where the plan "seems to break down." 
	Jarvis urged the formation of a set of rigorous standards that
could result in a certificate for graduate students as they seek to
market not only their degree, but also their portfolio of teaching and
research skills acquired in graduate study. One idea, said Jarvis,
would be to help graduate students develop a video portfolio of their
experience as a teacher. "It need not be a Hollywood production" to be
effective, he said. 
	Jarvis also urged his audience to talk to junior faculty and
inquire of their concerns and problems, rather than referring to one's
own early development as an academic; and to give thought to preparing
graduate students at UB for the standards of other professional
placements they may seek because of marketplace realities. Because of
the increased use of adjunct professors, "the whole concept of
distanced learning," and other factors, Jarvis said, "the anticipated
shortage of professors" is likely not to happen.