Preparing Teaching Assistants in Hospitality Management Programs

The need to improve the quality of teaching in our colleges and universities has been well documented in the higher education literature, as well as in the public press. Many recommendations have been made in an attempt to improve the state of higher education. One such recommendation concerns the training of graduate teaching assistants for the classroom experience. Since most graduate programs in hospitality management utilize their graduate students as teaching assistants, this particular area of action will be discussed. A survey was developed to determine the extent to which existing graduate programs in hospitality management depend upon their graduates to teach and the extent to which the students are prepared for their teaching roles. Surveys were mailed to the program heads of all CHRIE member institutions which currently offer graduate degrees. The results of this survey are presented and a general model for training teaching assistants is proposed.