The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is pleased to announce a new leadership initiative: International TA Liaisons for CTL. This pilot program offers experienced international graduate teaching assistants (ITAs) a significant leadership role in their colleges and the opportunity to create a support network among their peers. 

“Creating this new partnership with international TAs is an extension of the hub-and-spoke model that CTL created with the Provost Teaching and Learning Fellows and the Graduate Teaching Fellows,” said Joyce Weinsheimer, director of CTL. “We hope this initiative will strengthen the voices of ITAs in our campus conversations, and give greater visibility to the diversity and contributions they bring to our campus. I'm excited about this new connection between CTL, the ITAs, and the colleges.” 

The spring 2021 cohort of ITA Liaisons represents five colleges (the colleges of design, computing, engineering, liberal arts, sciences), seven schools, and a variety of national cultures. In addition, each ITA Liaison has completed “CETL 8802: Special Topics in ITA Development” and has already successfully served as a TA in their respective school. Sarah Kegley, ITA program manager for CTL, is facilitating the pilot program.

Along with collaborating with the rest the cohort, ITA Liaisons will engage as leaders in their own schools. How? By designing a framework developed from individual experience, each member of the cohort is working on something significant to them and addressing a need they choose to highlight.  

“We're excited to work together in this initiative; we can support each other and incoming ITAs in distinctive ways that may not occur to others,” said Ximena Pizarro, one of the program participants and a Public Policy Ph.D. student.   

Mohammad Nikbakht, another participant and an Electrochemical Engineering Ph.D. student, feels similarly. 

“If I'd known then what I know now! I think we can help incoming ITAs with this experience,” Nikbakht added. 

In addition to Nikbakht and Pizarro, the following students were selected for the program: 

• Arpit Bhardwaj, Civil and Environmental Engineering 
• Rui Chen, Mechanical Engineering 
• Fan Jiang, Robotics Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Robotics Ph.D.
• Jung Hyun Lee, School of Building Construction 
• Daniyar Omarov, School of Mathematics