Mentorship Grants Aim To Improve Teaching

Five graduate students and five professors will take the University's innovative mentorship program into its second semester in the fall with five new undergraduate conference courses.

Five faculty member-graduate student pairs recently nabbed mentorship grants, first initiated this spring, to offer courses on narrowly focused topics ranging from religion to economics.

"This program is designed to encourage senior faculty members to teach new undergraduate courses," said Steven E. Ozment, associate dean of the faculty of arts and sciences. The grants are administered from Ozment's office.

The program provides an "occasion for senior faculty members to teach small, high level undergraduate courses," Ozment said.

The first two recipients of mentorship grants are teaching this semester.

"I've been very pleased with what I've heard," said Ozment on this semester's results. "I think it's achieving what it's meant to."

Five applications for fall 1986 grants were received and all accepted, according to Ozment.

"For the first time at Harvard, I'll be teaching what I like to teach and what I'm qualified to teach," said William F. Brundage, awarded a grant to teach a course on "The New South," with Alan Brinkley, Dunwalke Associate Professor of American History.

Brinkley said that the advantage of the pairing with graduate students lies in "bringing someone into the course that will have new ideas and a perspective that is valuable."

"I think [the program] is an excellent idea and am anxious to see how it will work out in practice," said Hendrik S. Houthakker, Lee Professor of Economics. Houthakker and graduate student Robert N. Stavins will teach "Consumer Behavior" this fall, presenting the theory and practice of consumer demand analysis.

"This is the course I've always wanted to teach," said Jan N. Barbaro, a graduate student who will be working with Richard N. Frye, Aga Khan Professor of Iranian.

Frye and Barbaro's course, entitled "Buddhism in Central Sia from Asoka to the Mongols," will focus on the "history and evolution of Buddhism as it went on the Silk Road from India to China," Barbaro said.

Recent archaeological research in China and the Soviet Union will be the basis for exploration of Buddhist history in the course, according to Barbaro.

Alan E. Heimert '49, Cabot Professor of American Literature, will teach "English Puritanism and New England" with Janice Knight.

The fifth Mentorship grant has been awarded to Cabot Professor of History Ernst Badian and graduate student T. Corey Brennan, who will be offering "Barbarians in Greek and Roman Historiography."

Funding for this program is provided by a University Development and Improvement Fund associated with Ozment's office. A stipend of more than $4000 per semester is awarded to the graduate student.