Graduate Students Optimistic About New Teaching Program

Four teaching fellows said yesterday they were generally optimistic about Harvard's intention to set up a center to assist graduate students in their teaching, but said they hoped the grant would not mask other problems facing the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

AnElissa Lucas, a sixth-year graduate student and teaching fellow in Government, said that although the program could be "very constructive," major problems regarding senior Faculty members are still unresolved.

"One of the failures of the Ph.D. programs is that you are at no point supervised; no one tells you how to grade papers or how to relate to students," she said.

The program would be "beautiful if it were organized to deal with teaching arts," she added, but the biggest problem will be to encourage all departments to participate fully in the program.

Look and Learn

Jeffrey Green, a fourth-year graduate student and teaching fellow in Physics, said he thought teaching fellows would learn a great deal from viewing and listening to their section meetings on video tape. But Green also said he did not think the program would improve the quality of teaching of those graduate students who were "doing it purely as a way of support."

Jean C. Angew, a teaching fellow in