"I really loved those years as a teaching fellow," Forsgard says. "One of the important things that I can bring to the house is an understanding of what undergraduates go through."

Next year, Forsgard says she will return to botany to work on Genus Hevea, the type of plant from which we get 98 percent of our natural rubber.

"After having three children and working at OCS, my graduate botany career was kind of put on hold for a little bit," says Forsgard, who plans to get her doctorate and pursue a botany career.

Community Service

Forsgard says she is glad that Eliot sponsors such community service programs as Project HAND, Jimmy Fund and Big Brother/Big Sister.

"I think that's a wonderful tradition of public service," says Forsgard, who has run community service projects herself in the past. Those include a kite-making workshop at a public library in her hometown.

Mitchell and Forsgard say they want to bring Eliot students to their current home in Harvard, Mass., where they say the scenery is beautiful.

"We may try and involve the sophomore class and take them out there and show them the countryside," Mitchell says.

This wouldn't be the first time Mitchell has opened his home to students, according to Joseph W. Secondine '92, who has taken four classes with Mitchell. Secondine says Mitchell invited his students to his house to pick apples and extended another invitation to the unlucky students who stayed at school during Thanksgiving break.

Mitchell and Forsgard haven't lived at their suburban home for long; they spent most of the past decade in the College house system. Mitchell was a resident tutor at North House from 1983 to 1987, and Forsgard served as an Eliot House tutor from 1980 to 1989. The two were co-tutors in North House from 1985 to 1987.

Mitchell says he decided to become involved in the house system when he realized that "this is an education that I can get and take away with me."

He says his plans for Eliot include trying to promote more in-house drama and "thinking of innovative ways to bring the students and faculty back together--the kind of intellectual discourse that the houses are designed to foster within the social context."

Though Eliot's departing master, Alan C. Heimert '49, was outspoken against randomization, Mitchell says he is less interested in the issue.

"The debate about randomization is over," Forsgard says. "What we'd like to do is make sure that we help to foster the friendliest community possible."

Three Children