VIGRE at UCLA Math

VIGRE at the Graduate Level
The UCLA Mathematics Teaching Experience

This program is designed to provide graduate students with a firsthand experience at the teaching of large undergraduate classes - for instance, Advanced Calculus - without having to face the responsibility of actually running a full course. The graduate students play two roles:

They serve as the teaching assistants for the course.
They give occasional guest lectures to the full class.

Of course, the actual guest lectures are performed under the close supervision of the faculty: The full complement of faculty and graduate students meet at the beginning of each week. Those graduate students scheduled to give a guest lecture in the forthcoming week are required to present a run-through of (a portion of) their lectures. This is subjected to critique by their peers and by the attendant faculty. If necessary - which is often the case - some adjustments in the material and/or presentation are incorporated into the lecture. When the time of the actual lecture arrives, the faculty member is present during the class; ostensibly, to intervene in case of emergency but, in practice, to provide moral support for the grad-student lecturer.

At present the program is in the "pilot" stage. Specifically, there are eight students - the bulk of whom are VIGRE students - and three faculty members engaged in the process. So far, it appears that the program is running successfully. All the graduate students have given at least one lecture and it is clear that they have all benefited substantially from the experience. Furthermore, the undergraduate recipients have responded enthusiastically. (In particular, all guest lecturers have received spontaneous applause at the end of their classes.)

We envision that the program will continue into the indefinite future, processing on the order of thirty students per year.

For questions or comments please contact webmaster@math.ucla.edu