Academic Morphing: Teaching Assistant to Faculty Member

This paper discusses the process by which graduate teaching assistants (TAs), participating in a longitudinal study, used their graduate TA experience to successfully survive the transition from being a teaching assistant to becoming a faculty member. A theoretical framework is presented that describes how individual characteristics of the TAs worked together with disciplinary, institutional, and departmental forces to shape a set of professional values. These professional values helped to form strategies for success: one set used for securing the first faculty position and the other set used to balance professional roles during the first year as a faculty member. These strategies for success contributed to the socialization process of the TAs in the first year of their faculty positions. The results of this study may help institutions broaden opportunities for graduate student support. It is the first three semesters of a faculty career that provide the framework for future success or failure. Early career events offer a complete and predictable picture of how new faculty will thrive. How well both women and men make that transition from being a graduate student to an active faculty member in tenns of being immersed in campus life, in being productive, in self-management, and in social management in their discipline is evident even by the third semester on a campus (Boice, 1992). The time frame for this academic morph-ing from teaching assistant to faculty member is reflected in the third year review process that many institutions use to promote or evaluate new faculty. The transition from graduate student to faculty member the first year of that three.:year span is perhaps the most crucial because it marks a drastic change in circumstance, location, monetary rewards, professional status, family upheaval, and professional challenges. This paper discusses the process by which graduate teaching assistants (TAs), participating in a longitudinal study, used their TA experience to help them successfully manage the first year transition from being a teaching assistant to becoming a faculty member.