"I'm not going to sit here smugly and say thateverything's fine," Knowles says. "Nothing is everperfect."

But the "asymmetry" Buell notes leads to agreater degree of perfection in some departmentsthan in others. Each department has its owntraining procedures or lack thereof, and in manydepartments training is left to individual courseheads.

For example, the History Department lacks adepartment-wide training policy, although it doesnot allow graduate students to teach until theyhave completed two years of study.

The result is that the quality of TF teachingrelies solely on the efforts of individual TFs andprofessors, who do not always take the initiative.

There is no policy to address problems in thesections, says History teaching fellow Paul G.Mitchinson.

"I don't really know what would happen ifsomeone didn't pull their load," he says. "There'snothing formally established for overseeing the TFsystem."

Some professors are simply more "hands on" thanothers, History teaching fellow Jon S. Rosenbergsays.

At one end of that spectrum stands BairdProfessor of History Richard Pipes, who keeps hishands resolutely off.

"We don't train people in teaching," saysPipes, whose classes' sections are voluntary.

"You tell them a few principles and let themloose," he says.

Sometimes this policy of non-interferenceworks, as in the case of Pipes' TFs who improvedhis performance through self-motivation.

One of Pipes' TFs received a "devastating"rating from the CUE guide and was "shattered" byit, he says. To correct the problem the TF simplypaid close attention to the areas of complaintand did "very well" the next year, Pipes says.

But other times the Pipes policy does not work.Other professors in History have more explicittraining and guidance procedures to ensure theirsection leaders are never "shattered" by studentratings.

Professor of History Mark A. Kishlansky meetswith his TFs two or three times each week toensure that section discussions are thriving.

"I mostly am concerned that they are genuinelyinterested and committed to undergraduate teachingand that they are willing to carve out the time todo it properly," he says.