The purpose of this assignment is for you to write about people in a typical business context (writing a recommendation letter), rather than about a purely technical matter.
To make the assignment as real as possible, you will write about real people, making a recommendation for a real purpose--you are to recommend a teaching assistant for a teaching award. Pick the best TA you have had at UCSC. If you have not had any good TAs, you can write a letter about a faculty member, but then it must be addressed to Alumni Teaching Awards Committee, rather than to the Graduate Dean. If you have had no good TAs or faculty at UCSC, you can request permission to write about some teacher from a former school. If you have never had a good teacher, you will need to pick the best of the lot, hold your nose, and write the recommendation anyway.
You have one goal--to do your best to get a teaching award for a TA who you believe deserves one. To do that, you you have to present detailed information about the TA in a persuasive letter.
This memo will be addressed to the Graduate Dean (currently Ronald Henderson), but will actually be read by a committee of faculty from all divisions. You can assume that the faculty have some vague idea what TAs normally do, and what constitutes good teaching by TAs, but not precisely what your TAs have done. The different divisions and even different departments within a division vary enormously in how they use TAs in their courses, so you will have to be explicit about what the TA you are recommending did that was so special.
Start by saying who you are recommending for the award, and what courses he or she was the TA for. Summarize the TA's strongest points in a few concise paragraphs, then give an anecdote or two illustrating the strengths. End with a conclusion that sums up everything you've said, leaving the reader with a very positive impression of the TA. (Reread Chapter 4 of Huckin and Olsen on how to construct an argument [HO91].)
Be specific! Vague generalities like ``good teacher'' are useless--they don't do anything to convince the committee. You'll probably need to make some notes about what you really liked about the TA before you start--maybe even talk with some friends who have had the same TA to get more incidents to use as support for your arguments.
Make sure your paragraphs have topic sentences, and that the flow between paragraphs and sentences is smooth. The committee has to read a large number of applications, and a well-written, pleasant-to-read letter will have more influence than a choppy, disorganized one.
Write the recommendation either as a memo or as a business letter with proper formatting [HO91, Chapters 12 and 13]. Be consistent in your choice of format!
A good recommendation letter for a TA award is 2-3 pages long, so you will have to use a multi-page letter or memo format. Please remember that letterhead is only used on the first page of a letter--after that plain paper is used. It is a good idea on a long letter or memo to indicate how many pages there are, so that pages are not lost (for example, by numbering the pages 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3).