Faculty members, however, say departments were warned not to sacrifice quality to quantity. All TFs must complete training in the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

Knowles also says that increasing financial aid for graduate students--an issue the Faculty Council will continue to address this year--has potential to improve the quality of teaching fellows.

"The Faculty Council will discuss how and at what pace we will make changes in graduate student aid," he says. "It affects undergraduates in so far as you'd much rather have brilliant and happy TFs than the other kind."

Building for Students

According to Knowles, recent renovations to Boylston Hall and the Barker Center were designed to cater specifically to undergraduate academic needs.

And new, multi-million dollar building projects promise to occupy much of the Faculty's time in the coming year.

Because of the refurbishment of the Barker Center, professors and TFs in a single department now have offices in close proximity to each other--creating a closer-knit academic society and the opportunity for one-stop advising.

"It would be nice if when you went to see your TF, you might also run into your professor," Knowles says. "That's the kind of community that has been shaped by the Barker Center."

Undergraduates say the change can already be felt.

"I'm in the Afro-American department, and all of my teachers are in the Barker Center," says Rodney M. Glasgow '01. "It gives us a locus of concentration. It makes it really easy to get in touch with people when they're all right there."

A similar sort of academic community might be created in the sciences as well. Plans for two new buildings--the Maxwell-Dworkin building for computer science and the Naito chemistry building are underway.

A Perennial Concern: Advising

Hurwitz says one area the Faculty may soon address is undergraduate advising.

"A lot of people feel in the dark both with their concentration and their personal advising," she says.

Such a review would be welcome to many students, who complain that proctors in the first-year dorms are often uninformed and concentration advisors enter the picture too late.