Broaden RA pool to include grad students
Resident Associates are strange creatures — there is no typical RA. Some are young, exuberant tenure-track assistant professors. Some are grandfatherly, a source of institutional memory. Some are staff members seeking interaction with students. And as of now, two do not earn a Rice paycheck at all. (See story, page 1.) We like this diversity — although we understand that legally Rice cannot use non-Rice employees as RAs — and we think it should expand.
The qualities undergraduates want in an RA — such as 24/7 availability, an outgoing personality and an appreciation for the quirkiness of Rice and its students — are not possessed solely by a certain class of people in the Rice community. Anyone affiliated with Rice might have these qualities — or might not. So Rice will have the best RAs when there are as few restrictions on the applicant pool as possible. This will allow search committees to find the RAs who best fit their colleges, regardless of why they are on the university payroll.
Therefore, graduate students should be allowed to be RAs. Besides increasing the overall applicant pool, adding graduate students to the list of possible populations from which RAs can be drawn would have a number of advantages.
First, graduate students are generally younger than assistant professors and most staff. They are closer to undergraduates in the university pecking order and they might be even better able to relate to undergraduates than current RAs.
Secondly, many Rice undergraduates want to go to graduate school, and honest, helpful advice from someone who was in graduate school less than 15 years ago is sparse. Having an approachable graduate student down the hall might help demystify the graduate school application process — and, more importantly, the graduate student experience.
Finally, including graduate students as RAs would integrate them into the college system, bringing the system closer to President Edgar Odell Lovett’s original vision and forming a more cohesive campus community.
The only roadblock is that turnover among graduate student RAs might be high, because many are only here for a short time. But this problem would be solved if college search committees prioritized applications from first-year Ph.D students — generally here for about five years — who if accepted could start their term in their second semester or year.
For too long, undergraduates have viewed graduate students as just the “creepy” people who TA our classes, grade our homework and hang out at Valhalla. That need not be the case. Including them in college life by considering them in RA searches will strengthen ties between all Rice students, among numerous other advantages.
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