Muleskinner

Issue date: 10/6/05 Section: Features

Stephanie Flippin - Muleskinner - Mike Kersulov, a first semester graduate student, teaches a beginning composition class as part of his teaching assistantship in the English department.

In some classes, Mike Kersulov is the ordinary everyday English teacher. He lectures, assigns reading and homework, grades papers, gets excited about literature and prepares students for tests. In other classes, he is the ordinary student who takes notes on lectures, does homework and prepares himself for tests.

Altogether, Kersulov is a graduate assistant who knows just how difficult it can be to separate oneself from being a student and a teacher.

One of the ways Kersulov separates himself is the way he dresses. He wears contacts in the classroom while teaching and wears glasses outside of those classes. The reason for the change is simply professional. He wants to be a teacher when he's teaching and be a student when he's not.

"The teacher is on a different stage than students," Kersulov said. "Like an actor dresses for the stage, I like to dress for the role I have in the classroom."

His role as a teaching graduate assistant in the classroom and as a student outside of the classroom can sometimes get very busy. He teaches two classes of Composition I and takes eight hours of graduate classes.

"I have a lot of responsibility," Kersulov said. "I have to separate time between a lot of things. I have to allow time to grade papers, study and get ready for classes."

He also says the assistantship has provided him things beyond experience teaching in a classroom.

"It's given me an improved mind," Kersulov said. "Every time you teach, you have to study more because you don't want to find yourself in a position where you don't know what you're talking about, or you don't know the answer to a question. You become very knowledgeable about what you are teaching."

According to Novella Perrin, dean of the graduate school, 206 graduate students are participating in assistantships this semester, and 143 of them have a full-time graduate assistantship.

"There is a huge demand," Perrin said.

Kersulov teaches classes, but there are many different kinds of assistantships available to graduate students.

Continued...

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