Features of the program include the ability to adjust section sizes, assign students to specific sections based on predetermined criteria and notify students of their assigned section via e-mail.

"It's really a whole suite of services for a teaching staff. He developed this software with a lot of understanding...it's a very smart package," Berger said.

Those using the program echoed Berger's sentiments.

"It used to take two people eight hours [to section BS-11]," said Lauraine Dalton, a molecular/cellular biology preceptor. "Now it takes one person two hours."

Suzanne T. Lane, a teaching assistant in Expository Writing, added that the program makes it possible for one person to complete the sectioning process in the same amount of time it took six people without the program.

Silberstein, who still works for the ICG, estimates that between working with TFs and staff members, writing the documentation for the program and writing the program itself, he has put in 200 to 300 hours on the project.

And despite all the time invested and glowing reviews, the program is still a work in progress.

"I guess my goal is to keep improving it until every class with a considerable number of students [more than 100] can use it if they want to," he said.

Streamlined Voting

When Silberstein joined the council during his first year, necessity proved to be the mother of invention.

"I thought of a voting program at the beginning of last year," Silberstein said. "Harvard had this whole Internet thing, but we were voting on paper ballots. There were a lot of problems."

So he teamed up with Eugene E. Kim '96 to write a computer voting program. Kim wrote the part of the program which actually tallies the votes, while Silberstein created the software's user interface.

Because council elections utilize a complicated proportional voting system, tallying used to take a few days. Silberstein saw an opportunity to use computerized tallying to save many hours of work.

Accessible over the Harvard network, the program was first implemented by the council for last fall's first-year elections.

According to the author, voter turnout exceeded 1,000 votes, roughly double that of the previous years.

And according to others, the new system is much easier to manage.