Usually when a Harvard undergraduate talks about his desire for starting a career right after graduation, he's not interested in social service. For Allen Carver '86, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

"I'm going to actually graduate with a job which is a strange thing at Harvard. But I'm going to be a teacher, that's the nice thing," says Carver, who is one of 13 Harvard students currently enrolled in the Undergraduate Teaching Education Program (UTEP).

The university-sponsored program, which started last fall, is Harvard's latest effort to certify undergraduates to teach in the nation's public high schools. Although the School of Education offered a master of arts degree in teaching back in the early '70s, UTEP is the first teacher training program directed specifically at Harvard undergrads.

The idea of redesigning the older program gained momentum after a speech three years ago by President Derek C. Bok. In his address, Bok said that Harvard needed to assume a more active role in public education, says Martha P. Leape, director of the Office of Career Services.

Other Ivy League schools such as Brown University have offered similar programs for a number of years, says Thomas E. Hassan, a UTEP advisor and a freshman proctor. At Harvard, students who complete the program will be able to teach high school in public school systems in 33 states including Massachusetts.

Applications to the four-part program are due in the spring and local teachers, like Diane Tabor, say the process has garnered some of the cream of Harvard's crop. An assistant principal at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School where UTEP students are currently observing classes, Tabor notes the value of the application process. "[UTEP] really has tried to seek out students who are intelligent and academically gifted," she says.

Education experts say the prospects for UTEP students upon graduation appear bright. "By 1992 we will need more than a million new teachers because of resignations, retirements, and increased enrollment," says Howard J. Carroll, a spokesman for the National Education Association.

"[Teachers in] math and science are always the greatest shortage because industry recruits them. But now there is a shortage [of high school teachers] in almost every area," Carroll says.

Besides traditional concentration requirements, students enrolled in UTEP must take two additional half-courses in adolescent psychology and classroom and educational issues. Program participants then must complete 60 hours of field work, in which they observe teachers at work at various area high schools.

After finishing this half the program, students then must complete 300 hours of in-class teaching at area high schools in the spring. While getting in-class teaching experience, students also must take two additional half-courses at the School of Education--a workload several students say is too demanding.

So far, several students participating have already dropped out of the first-year program. They say that the requirements of the program are too much to juggle in their senior year--between spending 300 hours of classroom time, taking classes and, perhaps, writing a thesis.

One participant who has dropped out, Sarah L. Szanton '88, says, "Given the set requirements of the Core [curriculum] and my major, I didn't want to use up my electives on the training program when I could get paid for it after college." The Afro-American Studies concentrator from Adams House says she has seen programs that pay students for the teaching they do at the same time they were taking courses for their instructor's certificate.

Szanton also says that the program lacks a strong support structure to help undergraduates get through the graduate level courses and extensive tutoring and teaching requirements.

"Because it's the first year of the program, there's not a very strong support structure yet," she says.

Szanton says she definitely intends to teach after she graduates. "I think it's a good idea for Harvard to make an easy channel to teaching in the public school, but the logistics just didn't work out for me."