Faculty Laud New Teaching Plan

Senior Faculty members agreed yesterday that using teaching fellows in middle group courses was a worthwhile experiment that could improve undergraduate education. But they were cautions about employing the graduate students to effect sweeping changes in their own courses.

Elliott Perkins '23, professor of History, said he thought teaching experience would be of great value to prospective Ph.D. candidates, and could also improve middle-group courses.

"In some cases meeting with young, alert people might be more helpful than listening to some old goat driveling away on the platform," he said. Perkins warned, however, that teaching fellows would require close supervision by senior Faculty members because "too much delegation of responsibility to inexperienced people could bring bad results."

Student Response Important

Perkins said he would use teaching fellows in his own course, History 142, next fall, and stated that the success of the program would be measured by student response. "Over the years the Harvard undergraduate has responded to things worth responding to," he stated.

The Government Department voted last night "in principle" to join the History Department in extending long-term fellowship aid to its graduate students.

Dean Ford estimated yesterday that the expanded fellowship program would cost the University from $80,000 to $150,000 a year for each department that decides to adopt it.

The estimates are for five years from now, when the University would be footing the bill for tuition plus $1500 expenses for first and second year graduate students, as well as students in their final year of study. History students in their third and fourth years would be classed as teaching fellows and would be paid under that program.

John T. Dunlop, professor of Economics and department chairman, said the Ec department would consider some form of the History Department plan this fall, and would welcome the opportunity to offer long-term fellowships to its graduate students.

Ec Well Staffed

But he said the department would not want to tie fellowship aid to teaching requirements because middle group courses in Economics are already fairly well staffed with teaching fellows. "At present a very high proportion of our good students do teach," Dunlop said. "There is no shortage of teaching appointments for those I consider well qualified--in fact I've been pressed pretty hard to recruit the quality of staff I'd like to get."

Dunlop said he was opposed to the indiscriminate sectioning of middle group courses; to be valuable the section hour must be well planned and "must have an independent life of its own." "I'm somewhat opposed to the standard quiz section approach," he stated.