About the LA Program
Mission
The mission of UCLA’s learning assistant program is to EMPOWER STUDENTS through inclusive STEM teaching. By facilitating collaborative and inclusive learning, LAs transform the STEM classroom into one that encourages EVERY student to ask, interact, explain, and deepen their own understanding.
Below is an April 2018 slide show about UCLA’s LA program.
The Learning Assistants (LA) Program in the Sciences at UCLA is an evidence-based, multidisciplinary instructional strategy, in which undergraduate students who have succeeded in a given course receive credit to learn how to help the next group of students succeed in that course. It is specifically geared toward large introductory science, engineering and math courses. LAs thus help facilitate active learning and collaborative instruction in lecture, discussion and/or lab.
The program aims to strengthen a few key aspects of UCLA courses:
- Enhance the ability of faculty to effectively scale active learning, collaborative learning, and other interactive activities to more effectively teach a large and diverse student body.
- Increase the success and skills of the LAs themselves, as they refine content knowledge, while gaining new communication skills and a sense of community.
- Increase the level of student satisfaction and belonging in these courses, and for the LAs themselves.
- Provide feedback to instructors and TAs about ways to improve instruction, since LAs are often more aware of student perspectives and interests than the faculty and TAs teaching the courses.
For a detailed explanation of LA and instructor responsibilities, please refer to the buttons on the top of the page.
Contact
LA program development team (undergraduates): Dominic Diaz, Timothy Hamilton, Mariam Ghattas, Max Zhu, Irena Roy, Byron Corado, Raphael San Jose, Aashi Patel, Joshua Lee, and Sarah Castillo.
Director of the LA program: Shanna Shaked
Senior Associate Director of CEILS
Lecturer, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Email: shaked@ceils.ucla.edu
Office Location: Young Hall 3077D
Other past and present program coordinators:
Gaston Pfleugl, Life Sciences Core
Heather Tienson-Tseng, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Nadia Sellami, Undergraduate Research Center – Sciences (LA program co-founder)
Josh Samani, Physics & Astronomy
Past PDT members: Johnny Dang, Kylie Rostad, Elisa Fazzari
Funding
The LA program is supported by…
Much of this website was developed in collaboration with LAs Ashley Clemens, Stephanie Yang, Nehal Banik, Emily Duong, Johnny Dang, Sara D’souza, and Yiwei Sun.
Dr. Gaston Pfluegl and Dr. Jane Shevtsov created the Undergraduate Assistant program in the Life Sciences, and the LA program was built upon their groundwork in Winter 2016 by Dr. Nadia Sellami (Life Sciences) and Dr. Shanna Shaked (Physical Sciences).