V.13 USE OF READERS

1. Reader assistance is intended to provide faculty members and instructional academic staff with assistance in the grading of problem sets, exams, homework, papers, and projects, but is not intended to relieve faculty members of their overall grading responsibility for the course. We expect faculty and instructional academic staff to play an active role in grading student coursework.
2. Course enrollment and/or the nature of the course should justify the need for grading assistance. While readers are often needed in relatively small enrollment courses that are homework intensive, other types of courses should have a substantial enrollment (normally at least 40 students) before reader assistance is considered. The overall instructional assignments of the instructor for the particular semester should also be considered.
3. The grader cannot be a currently registered student in the course for which the grading is done.
4. Graduate assistant readers/graders should not be grading the research papers of their fellow graduate students. While it may be appropriate for one graduate student to evaluate certain types of work (e.g., routine homework, statistical problem sets) done by another graduate student, the instructor in charge of the course should take on any grading duties connected with graduate-level work which is directly related to the discipline.
5. In the relatively rare instances in which a reader/grader is needed in a course that also employs teaching assistants, it is important to distinguish carefully between what the TA is expected to do and what the reader is expected to do. For example, an hourly reader/grader might be asked to grade short answer questions while the TA would be expected to evaluate essay questions or the reader would be expected to evaluate routine homework while the TA is expected to evaluate semester-long projects.
6. Any discussion with students or office hours held by the reader/grader are to be limited strictly to questions about the grading; the reader/grader should not be expected to provide general course instruction or guidance to students.
7. Lecture attendance: The College does not have funding to routinely cover lecture attendance on the part of hourly readers/graders. Generally speaking, graduate students asked to serve in the role of reader should be expected to have the disciplinary expertise necessary to perform grading duties under the guidance of the instructor, with the level of guidance somewhat higher when a graduate student's background in the area is not extensive. There may be exceptions to this in unusual cases; for example, when a new faculty member teaches a new course for which none of the department's graduate students can be expected to have the necessary background or when a highly interdisciplinary course is taught and there is no corresponding interdisciplinary graduate program in which a graduate student could have gained the requisite background for the breadth of topics to be covered.

Hourly project assistant reader/graders, as all project assistants, are expected to be graduate students enrolled for at least six credits or three dissertator credits unless the department has approved a request for an exception. All readers/graders must receive an appointment letter; format letters are sent to departments with the approval of a reader request. 

If no qualified graduate students are available to serve as hourly project assistant readers/graders, a department may request permission to appoint an undergraduate assistant reader or an instructional specialist (academic staff) reader.

Departments should be aware that the Fair Labor Standards Act applies to hourly reader appointments. Avoid assignments that will exceed 40 hours per week (alone or in combination with other University employment); the cost of all employment (not just the reader hours) may increase greatly. If staff or course instructors foresee such a problem, share or schedule the assignments in a way that will prevent the problem.

Questions about readers should be directed to Nancy Westphal-Johnson (3-2506), Brian Bubenzer (5-0603), or the appropriate academic Associate Dean.

Revised August 2007, by NWJ.