The center was created 25 years ago and is currently FAS’ only centralized system for training section leaders. Its services are both voluntary and anonymous.
The center employs a staff of fourteen people which receives nearly a million dollars a year from FAS, most of which comes from unrestricted funds.
And though participation in Bok Center services is usually voluntary, TFs who receive low CUE ratings will be required to work one-on-one with the Bok Center on their teaching skills.
A second low rating will put them on probation from teaching in FAS until they receive further instruction from the center.
The center also rewards excellent teaching, awarding TFs who receive a CUE guide rating of at least 4.5 out of 5 possible points.
“The most ideal program from our standpoint would be for the TF to attend our one or two-day orientation at the beginning of the semester, and then for them to come in with their class and be taped,” said Bok Center Director James D. Wilkinson ’65.
Yet Wilkinson said that this is not usually the case and that the center has contact with only about half of TFs, TAs, and CAs each year.
The Opposition
As the Bok Center and individual departments continue to try to improve the quality of teaching within FAS, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) emphasizes the burden that teaching places on their students.
“There is a lot of demand on TFs at Harvard. The expectations are high for both the students and the teachers here,” said Katerina Markovic Stokes, a TA in First Nights from Brandeis University. CAs also admit that the demands placed on their time can be daunting.
“Between section, office hours, grading, and attending lecture it takes up as much time as a fifth class,” says Ariel B.E. Shwayder ’03, a CA for Math 101.
Dean of the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Peter T. Ellison said that most departments do not allow graduate students to serve as teaching fellows until after they have completed their general exams.
The GSAS is also working to eliminate first-year graduate students from the TF market, where they are most frequently present in the natural sciences, something that will require a substantial financial commitment on the part of the GSAS.
“We are currently working on focusing the teaching that graduate students do so that it is more fully integrated as part of their academic and professional training,” Ellison says.
But FAS does not see this new policy as a threat to TF availability.
“The intention is not to reduce the availability of TFs but rather just to move teaching to a later point in a graduate student’s career,” Pedersen says.
Wilkinson adds that such a rule would also allow TFs to begin teaching at a point in their careers when they can both benefit from the teaching experience more and be a better resource to their students.
“There are definitely times during which the natural conflict between wanting to be a good teacher and having deadline for my dissertation arises. The two are often difficult to juggle, but it is a conflict inherent in all academia,” says Matthew D. Lundin, a TF in the history department.
And while FAS continues to focus on hiring and training teachers, and TFs work to balance their schedules, students are left to make the most of their undergraduate experience with, at best, inconsistent support from the College.