The Graduate College will ask the Arizona State Legislature for $2 million this fall to hire 150 more graduate teaching assistants for next year, in hope of reducing the workload of teaching assistants.

The Arizona Board of Regents will discuss asking the state for more funding to hire more GTAs at a meeting tomorrow in Tempe.

Some GTAs have complained of being overworked and underpaid.

"A spring 2000 workload survey showed that the GTAs at UA self-report a 22 percent overload. A (GTA) that is supposed to work 20 hours, works 24 hours a week," said Gary Pivo, dean of the Graduate College. "It is not unusual to find TAs working 50 percent more than their workload," he added.

If, despite a predicted state budget shortfall of $1 billion for next year, the Legislature approves the funding, the ranks of GTAs would grow by 12.6 percent.

UA currently has about 1,800 GTAs.

The workload would be spread around a little more, provided that the number of courses and other GTA work does not increase.

GTAs teach almost 5,000 undergraduates in freshman English composition each year and another 5,000 undergraduates in introductory chemistry or biology labs.

GTAs don't receive overtime pay, but are often forced to stay after class to fulfill their teaching responsibilities, Pivo said.

"It makes it difficult to graduate in a timely manner if you are spending 30 hours of your time teaching," said Pete Morris, Graduate and Professional Student Council president. "GTAs aren't given the respect they deserve given the role they play in research and teaching," he continued.

GTAs have felt the pressure in their workload, especially involving the number of students in their classes and the grading procedures.

"I am giving a writing course and there is a lot of grading to do. I have 25 students per section and I have two sections, so it is a lot of work," said Lolin Cervantes-Kelly, a fourth year graduate student in second language acquisition and teaching. "If (more funding) reduces the number of students in our class it will work, but if what they do is get more students and they have the same number of students per class, it won't help."

The Graduate College hopes that increasing the number of GTA positions will improve recruitment of quality graduate students, counter graduate student drop out rates and create better working conditions.

Without the additional positions, undergraduate classes like discussion sessions, and tutoring will have to be cut.

Pivo said increasing the number of GTAs will have several benefits.

"Having 150 more (graduate teaching) assistanceships will have some associated benefits," said Pivo. "One, the number of positions of graduate students who need financial aid will increase; and two, it will reduce attrition of graduate students. Three, it will improve the quality of instructions for undergraduates. Four, it will help us recruit more and better graduate students because we have more assistanceships to offer."

The issue of GTA workload has existed for a number of years at UA. In 2002-03 the Legislature approved a $1.2 million package to improve workload conditions, but due to budget cuts, the college only received $800,000 of that money.

That money went to hiring GTAs to keep up with growing enrollment and didn't lighten GTA workloads.