In addition, Knowles recently required all teaching fellows to attend lecture in the courses they are teaching, a change to which Davis attributes "tremendous improvement" in section teaching.

Size Restrictions

According to Wolcowitz, the College's guidelines state that the average section size in humanities and social science lecture courses should be 20 students.

He said that on average, reality matches the guidelines.

"It is well-informed by data that average section size greater than 20 is very, very unusual," he said. "When students experience that, it's because they are allowed to migrate and choose sections."

According to Davis, College guidelines limit lab and quantitative course sections to only 15 students, a policy he said "works well."

Wolcowitz says science sections are smaller because of concerns about supervision in labs.

But Karambis said he believes the ideal section size in the humanities is 12 to 13 students.

In larger sections, "the teaching fellow ends up asking a lot of questions, which is different from 12 or 13 students sitting around a table and talking to one another," he said.

Pilbeam said he expects more discussion on section teaching, although he added that he does not expect the Faculty to take any concrete measures for some time.

For now, Engell announced that he will divide his sections in half each week and students in the class will alternate being in his section or the one taught by Karambis.

"I can do that because it's not on the budget. I think it's important enough to do that," said Engell, whose course requires close readings of poetry.

"The situation is bad for graduate students and bad for undergraduates. I don't know the exact details about the financial situation, but the University should make it priority to reduce section sizes," Karambis said. "It's not so much that we feel exploited. It's just that we feel lost in the academic experience."

--Georgia N. Alexakis contributed to the reporting of this story.