"Is it true that graduate students teach all the undergraduate courses at Harvard?"

Every Harvard admissions officer evenutally must answer this question, as high school seniors repeat the commonly accepted belief that Harvard professors care little about undergraduate education and transfer many of their teaching duties to graduate students serving as teaching fellows.

Whether or not the stereotype is completely true, few members of the University would deny that the teaching fellows are vital to Harvard's educational system. It is graduate students who make it possible for 800-plus students to enroll in courses like Foreign Cultures 48, "The Cultural Revolution." And Social Analysis 10, "The Principles of Economics," could not be taught almost entirely in small groups without the course's more than 30 graduate student section leaders. Although teaching can take up a huge chunk of their time, graduate students take on courses because they enjoy interacting with undergraduates--and they need the money.

While graduate students are clearly integral cogs in Harvard's undergraduate education wheel, the question remains whether Harvard is giving these teaching fellows enough guidance and training in return. Academic graduate schools focus on producing good scholars and educators, but both the undergraduates who attend sections and outside observers are concerned that Harvard is failing in the latter goal; Harvard may not be teaching graduate students how to teach.

The University makes some resources available to teaching fellows to help them learn how to run sections and grade papers. The Danforth Center for Teaching and Learning holds orientation lectures at the begining of each semester for new teaching fellows, the Core program publishes a "how to" manual for TFs, and there are free videotaping and consulting resources for those graduate students who want other teachers to critique their performance.

Professors in a number of courses, including Ec 10, require their teaching fellows to be videotaped and analyzed by teaching consultants. In addition, some course heads ask their TFs to deliver lectures to the entire class.

Nonetheless, these professors are the exceptions rather than the rule. Most graduate students say they know few individual teaching fellows who have used Harvard's training resources. And University Marshal Richard M. Hunt is considered an anomaly because he allows every TF in his course, Literature and Arts C-45, "Culture and Society from Weimar to Nazi Germany," to give at least one lecture. Many teaching fellows say they have given only one or two--if any--lectures during their graduate school careers.

Lack of professorial encouragement is not the only reason why graduate students do not use resources like the Danforth Center. "I have seen graduate students, usually for financial reasons, who get so bogged down with teaching that they don't do a very good job at teaching," says Amy Boesky '81, a graduate student in English.

In addition, most teaching fellows say that the time they must spend preparing for sections each week can get frustrating. "If you've never taught in the course before, then you could spend one or two whole days preparing for a weekly section, and that's a lot of time," says Chris Brown, a resident history tutor in Eliot House.

"If you do it right then being a TF takes a lot of time," Boesky says.

The problem is exacerbated for head teaching fellows, particularly in large courses, who must cope with administrative details such as coordinating grading between sections and dealing with students who want to switch sections.

Furthermore, teaching can often prove so burdensome as to delay the writing of Ph.D dissertations.

"It is much more pressing and engaging to stay with the students," says one TF who asked not to be identified. "In the end, what gets shafted in almost every case is the graduate students' own work."

"I guess the tension is part of being an academic, though, so we [TFs] have to get used to it," Brown says.

Harvard attempts to help graduate students balance their responsibilities by placing restrictions on the number of courses they can teach each semester. However, many graduate students find it difficult to pass up the opportunity to teach.