As an international student, I struggle every summer with finding a job...

Raquel Garcia shares her experience as a DTEI summer fellow with the School of Humanities which provided her with training and essential funding during the summer.

I am Raquel García and this summer I was a DTEI fellow for the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). The DTEI fellowship is a very important fellowship that should be made available every summer, especially for Graduate Teaching Assistants (TA’s) that do not have any financial coverage during the summer. As an international student I struggle every summer with finding a job because of F-1Visa restrictions that do not allow to me work outside the university.  This means I do not get any money during the summers. This is why I loved the opportunity to be a DTEI fellow this summer because it allowed me to work online from my home country. I was able to see my family during these months and have enough money to cover campus sublease apartment costs.

As a DTEI fellow I helped professors in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at UCI adapt their courses to an online teaching format. I was also involved in curriculum development for the Spanish 1A and Spanish 2C courses offered by our department. Furthermore, I also helped fellow TA’s in my department with remote teaching questions. I found that the most repetitive function of a DTEI fellow was adapting and creating syllabi and activities using Canvas.  Working with professors side-by-side made this fellowship a great opportunity to meet, work and learn directly from them. This experience helped me improve my pedagogical knowledge and hone my online teaching skills (especially how to engage students online), and taught me the importance of creating a safe and engaging space for online student-learning. 

I believe that the DTEI fellowship should continue to be offered every summer. First, because graduate students really need this financial assistant. Second, because it is a program that students can use to improve their CV and teaching experience, and third, because professors and a lot of TA’s need help adapting their courses to online formats and continually improving their courses for the future. The DTEI fellowship has proven especially useful during this pandemic, however, I am sure that it will be needed every year to help make the jobs of professors and TAs easier and improve them for the post-pandemic future. We must not forget that every professor struggles more that we think with technology. You would be surprised to learn how many professors and even TA’s do not know how to improve their teaching using technology. Technology is on our hands; it is our responsibility to learn how to use it. Here is my advice: let a DTEI fellow help you get acquainted with the technological tools available in order to make your online and face-to-face courses better!
Go here more information on the opportunities available to graduate students through UCI's DTEI.