M I T Added
While the program was getting underway at Harvard this fall, a similar group was being formed at MIT. The Tech group's schedule is less demanding, which means that the public school involved can take its choice between a lot or a little help. When a school needs an undergraduate for only a few hours a week, it negotiates with students in the MIT group. If an MIT student finds his schedule too time-consuming, he can switch with a Harvard student.
Well-to-do "Idealists"
Although connected closely in this way with the Harvard members, MIT teachers are financially separate. They pay for their expenses themselves and have no support from any undergraduate organization. The HUT's, on the other hand, receive a certain amount of money from PBH and the Graduate School of Education. Because of the importance of publicity, the GSE paid for pamphlets. It can give no further aid however. PBH has allocated up to $350 for HUT transportation and food expenses, but even with this support the students must pay part of their expenses.
HUT members must make considerable financial sacrifice to teach under the present system, and MIT teachers even more. As it is, only relatively well-to-do "idealists" can afford to participate in the program. Scholarship students are effectively excluded as are many students with cars, Herzog reports. Most of the students could earn extra money tutoring if they were not in the HUT. Herzog is looking for an organization that will lend financial support so that the group can pay interested undergraduates a salary of $2.50 an hour plus transportation expenses.
Paid Manager Needed
As the group is now organized, Goldberg keeps track of the HUT's as much as possible in his capacity of volunteer manager. Some of the noticeable vagueness is there on purpose, since a great organizational structure would freeze the group and hamper the project's flexibility. The group needs a paid manager, however, to maintain regular channels among the schools, the University, and the officers. The HUT backers are looking for someone familiar with "school politics" who would act as liason between schools' needs and the academic and social obligations of undergraduates. If the HUT can find a student interested in this sort of work, they hope to expand to 30 students by next year. But even without a paid manager, the group continues to expand as undergraduates and teachers learn about it. Goldberg says it is possible for interested students to become HUT's up until the middle of the spring term.
No Cambridge HUT's
But before the HUT can expend much more it must get more schools to cooperate. Some interested schools are almost too far away for the program to be effective. (Transportation to Newton alone takes three quarters of an hour by MTA.)
In some schools the success of the program depends on one interested person, and if that person moves away, as a member of the Lexington system did, that school has no hesitation about pulling out of the project. Cambridge, the most logical place for the HUT, has shown no interest so far, but Herzog hopes as the project gains stature Cambridge will become involved. Cambridge schools, significantly, have not accepted apprentice teachers from the MAT program at the Graduate School of Education either.
Supporters of the HUT see this program as not only an aid to the quantitative problem but also a way of solving the qualitative shortage. Participating undergraduates are notably well-trained in their respective fields.
If financial support can be expanded and the program made selfperpetuating, the Harvard Undergraduate Teachers could be a very effective antidote to the Boston area teaching probrem--as well as an interesting "extra-curricular" for energetic students.