Also during the council meeting, Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell announced that he has received responses from all but four of "40-odd" departments and committees on how they plan to train teaching fellows (TFs), and that those four departments will respond soon.
The deadline for submitting proposals for TF training was December 1.
The plans come after a Faculty Council resolution last spring that mandated clearer guidelines for TF training.
"There was discussion during the council meeting about it, because I think all of us are quite concerned that the experience of undergraduates with TFs not be jeopardized by a lack of training or lack of command of the English language," Shepsle said.
Issues left for the council to decide, according to Secretary to the Faculty Council John B. Fox Jr. '59, and how to provide some guidance for TFs in the area of professional conduct, how to structure orientation programs for TFs and how to deal with TFs who have difficulty communicating in English.
In Other Business
The council briefly discussed the status of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program at Harvard, particularly "lengthening the arm between Harvard and the entity that would make payments to MIT," Shepsle said.
Council members do not know whether MIT would accept a check from a group unaffiliated with Harvard to pay Harvard students' ROTC fees, Fox said.
"Absolutely every player that I've heard of is trying to find the center" between the extremes of keeping Harvard ROTC and cutting it entirely, Fox said.
The council was also informed, according to Fox, that faculty members of the Student-Faculty Judiciary Board are about to be selected, and cases may be pending.
That group provides a rarely-used alternative to the Administrative Board, which handles disciplinary matters.
And the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations has asked to place on the docket for February's Faculty meeting a proposal implementing an A.M. degree in the department. That proposal will likely go on the docket, Fox said