Graduate employees are students employed by the UO as instructors, researchers or administrators. They grade assignments and are available for academic support and questions throughout the term. Above all, they are students — on top of the work they do for the university.
GTFF is a labor union representing graduate employees with more than 1,500 members. GTFF had been bargaining with the university regarding issues including living wages and improved access to housing and childcare since February 2023. On Jan. 15, a tentative agreement was reached between the union and the university, which the union ratified on Jan. 26.
This tentative agreement allowed GTFF to obtain their final bargaining demand, a minimum salary raise. According to GTFF’s statement on the tentative agreement, level one GEs are receiving a 31.81% raise to their minimum salaries, level two GEs a 16.68% raise and level three GEs a 10.5% raise.
Over the last 10 months of bargaining, GTFF has negotiated a number of other victories for employees, including better childcare support, support for international GEs and an additional four weeks of medical/family leave.
Life as a student
Rocky Penick, a GE researcher and instructor of biology, said that researchers can become overworked because there can be a fine line between their education and their research work.
“We work about 49% of a full work week, and then taking anywhere between 12 and 14 credits of research,” Penick said. “That ends up being somewhere around 30 hours of research a week, which means we’re pretty much always on the clock.”
Penick is taking 11 credits of research and three dissertation credits this term while also mentoring first-year rotation PhD students.
They said that they typically arrive on campus in the morning and spend the day doing research and mentoring the rotation students. In the evening, they said there are often talks or seminars by people in the biology department that they attend.
Penick said they are fortunate to have an understanding supervisor, so their work hours are flexible.
“My principal investigator is very understanding,” Penick said. “[My PI] understood that I also need to be a person in addition to being a graduate employee or graduate student.”
Penick said that sometimes work and research can result in long days, but they are able to still enjoy other parts of their life.
“I know that’s not everybody’s experience, but luckily it’s been mine,” Penick said.
Steven Turrill is a GE instructor of record for a college composition course and a master of fine arts candidate in the fiction program. Turrill said that the key to balancing being a student and an instructor is having a boundary between the two.
“Instructor of record is a very structured job,” Turrill said. “And then the courses that we take, the creative work [and] the things that we’re here to do are completely unstructured. The difficulty is finding that balance, making sure everything else in your life has a proper boundary.”
After teaching, Turrill said that he is attending three-hour classes and seminars where students discuss their own writing and things they’ve read.
Currently, Turrill is also working on his thesis for his writing program, which is a collection of short stories.
Turrill said he enjoys exploring literature outside of his studies, and is encouraged by his program to broaden his horizons.
Life as an instructor or researcher
Penick said that they teach for two terms during the year. Their teaching duties typically include grading, administering assignments and running labs or discussion sections.
Part of Penick’s time as a researcher includes mentoring a first-year PhD student who is cycling through different labs to find out what kind of research they’re interested in.
“We’re working on a very similar project,” Penick said. “So a lot of the time, it’s just shadowing what I do, but other times [I’m] helping out with logistical things like course requirements or helping to navigate what he wants to get out of this rotation.”
Turrill became a GE in September 2022. Last year he taught creative writing, and he now teaches college composition.
A typical day for Turrill includes arriving on campus to hold his office hours and prepare for class in Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, and then he goes to McKenzie Hall to hold class.
“Today I taught and we did some mock outlines for argumentative papers that we’re working on,” Turrill said. “But it’s a short class, 50 minutes. Before you know it, it’s over. And I’m back to being a student.”
Turrill said that something that makes GEs different when teaching is that they always have something in common with undergraduates — that they’re both students.
“I think it takes me back to what it was like for me being an undergraduate,” he said. “It is a unique position to be in where we are a bridge between the student body and the pool of faculty labor.”
For Amala Someshwar, a psychology student, teaching is her favorite position as a GE because she enjoys teaching undergraduates about lab and research methods.
“I really like teaching [psychology],” Someshwar said. “I’m interested in teaching post-grad, so I have really been trying to get as much teaching experience as possible.”
Someshwar found that dedicating entire days to being either a “teaching” or a “research” day helps her keep student and instructor work organized. Also, she creates time in her schedule to be “nothing” times to be able to take a break from working because “being a grad student — that’s kind of a neverending feeling.”
What they wish students knew
Penick said that it is important for students to understand that GEs are in graduate school because they love what they do.
“We love teaching, we love researching,” they said. “We love mentoring, we love learning and contributing to putting more knowledge into the world.”
Penick said that there is a misconception they are in it for the money, but says it is only because of the passion they have for their work and enjoyment for the things that they do.
Turrill said that if students are learning a lot from a GE, it is because the university has drawn good graduate students to it.
“If a student has a good experience in a class taught by a GE, or learns a lot in that class,” Turrill said, “they have done so because of the quality of graduate students that the university has accepted and attracted.”
Turrill said that a strength GEs have is being able to connect with their students and not feel as if they’re out of touch or in an “ivory tower.”
“And that’s because [I’m] constantly in the dynamic of teaching and teaching and teaching, and half of my time I’m also spending as a student,” Turrill said.
Someshwar said it is exciting when she’s able to engage with students about research and studies.
“Talking about research with the students is always very fun,” Someshwar said. “And feels a bit more personal when they realize that [GEs] are also students who are actively doing research.”
She feels as if this allows GEs and their students to have a deeper connection and thoughtful conversations about the work area they share.
Graduate employees are essential figures to many classes, but they’re students actively working toward their own academic goals, too.
