Dimensions of Culture Program

Thurgood Marshall College

Email: docinfo@ucsd.edu

Website: http://marshall.ucsd.edu/doc

Staff Contact: docinfo@ucsd.edu, (858) 534-0635

The Dimensions of Culture Program (DOC) welcomes Teaching Assistant applicants who are committed to intersectionality, antiracism, and interdisciplinary approaches to American culture as tools for honing the critical thinking and writing skills of first-year students in Thurgood Marshall College. Many graduate students who TA in DOC will find their own research enhanced by engagement with DOC faculty and TAs with interests and expertise in the social sciences and humanities. Moreover, the opportunity to teach in an interdisciplinary first-year writing program like DOC can greatly strengthen academic CVs while providing rigorous training in pedagogical philosophies and practical approaches.

The DOC Director and Associate Director guide and mentor Teaching Assistants weekly in antiracist writing pedagogy, specifically the instruction of composition and analysis of texts as potent forms of social justice. As part of DOC’s commitment to antiracist pedagogy and to mitigating the harm of standards-based grading on low-income students of color, DOC utilizes specifications-based grading. Under specifications-based contract grading, students are assessed on revision and engagement in the practice of writing.

All graduate student Teaching Assistants are required to enroll in DOC 500: Apprentice Teaching – Marshall each quarter in which they’re employed. In this 4-unit graduate seminar they will receive training in best pedagogical practices, including but not limited to: responding to student writing, developing students’ critical reading and argumentative writing skills, guiding students in developing metacognition and rhetorical flexibility, cultivating a democratic and antiracist classroom, working with multilingual writers, and fostering academic integrity.

Teaching Assistants will put into practice what they have learned in DOC 500 as they instruct discussion sections in the program’s lower-division sequence: DOC 1, DOC 2, and DOC 3. This sequence is required of all first-year students in Thurgood Marshall College and constitutes the core of the College’s general education requirements. It provides a unified academic experience for all first-year students that is grounded in the College’s commitment to social justice, while it also helps students meet the UC system’s requirement that they demonstrate proficiency in writing in English. Each quarter, our undergraduate students attend both large-class lectures taught by DOC faculty and small discussion section meetings guided by Teaching Assistants.

DOC 1, DOC 2, and DOC 3 courses are designed to be integrated, with central themes flowing from course to course and learning objectives building upon each other to help Thurgood Marshall College students practice the critical reading, drafting and revision, metacognition, and rigorous research necessary to succeed at UCSD and beyond by examining the promises and paradoxes in U.S. history, society, and culture.

DOC 1, “Reading Diversity,” is a four-unit course offered every Fall Quarter. In DOC 1, students practice critical reading. Students critically read the histories of multiple communities in the U.S., the origins of social stratification and structural inequities, and movements for social change. Teaching Assistants attend three DOC 1 lectures each week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) and teach two sections (of up to 16 students each) once each week, and they provide feedback on regularly assigned student journals.

DOC 2, “Arguing Justice,” is a six-unit, writing-intensive course offered every Winter Quarter. In DOC 2, students build on the critical reading they practiced in DOC 1 to hone their argumentative writing, exploring how authors make arguments for justice in U.S. society in the era just before and after the Civil Rights Movement. Teaching Assistants attend three DOC 2 lectures each week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) and teach two sections (of up to 16 students each) twice each week, and they provide comprehensive feedback on regularly assigned argumentative essays synthesizing at least two required texts.

DOC 3, “Imagination & Action,” is a six-unit, writing-intensive course offered every Spring Quarter. As the culmination of the lower-division sequence, DOC 3 has as its objective the development of students’ research processes. Students produce independent research projects that analyze a social problem/issue of their choice, and plan how they could implement a bottom-up intervention on campus supported by their research. Teaching Assistants attend three DOC 3 lectures each week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) and teach two sections (of up to 16 students each) twice each week, and they provide comprehensive feedback on research logs that culminate into a final research project.

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