Orchestrating the Job Search

Life for graduate students at any university is far from easy--full of worries about dissertations, career prospects and funding.

But at Harvard, graduate students sometimes face an additional concern: The stressful beginning-of-the-semester process of finding teaching fellow positions.

This year, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) administration is trying to ease the strain. The GSAS will run an experimental program geared toward making teaching fellow selection easier for both graduate students and professors.

The Teaching Fellow Information Clearing House, located in Lehman Hall, is designed to take some of the uncertainty out of the teaching fellow job search. The program, which begins tomorrow, will operate for the next few weeks.

According to Tom H. Neel, associate dean for GSAS administration and finance, the Clearing House will attempt to compile a list of courses that need TFs and a list of available teachers. Both professors and TFs can then use the information to find who--and what--they need.

"It's an experiment. I expect its impact will be small; however, everyone I've talked to thinks its a good idea," Neel says.

Students can participate in Clearing House by signing up at registration, Neel says. Once they express their availability to teach, they will be grouped by subject area.

Harvard has never had a real system for finding TFs, according to Neel. In the spring, each department asks graduate students to apply for teaching fellow positions. Professors produce approximate numbers of TFs needed and receive the names of eligible students.

"The Core and each department with courses did the best with what they could find," Neel says. "The old system worked extremely well--with predictable courses."

But until students turn in their study cards, well after courses begin, those numbers are guesses, at best. Harvard's traditional shopping period creates an atmosphere of uncertainty. While some courses have predictable enrollments, others draw varying numbers of students.

The result is a perennial period of scrambling and stress. Professors of over-enrolled classes frantically search for qualified graduate students, while teaching fellows in under-enrolled courses face the prospect of losing their jobs.

That's a frightening possibility for graduate students, many of whom depend on teaching jobs for financial support. According to the GSAS teaching fellows department, 1081 graduate students worked as TFs last year.

Carolyn M. Dever, a fifth-year English graduate student, says English students are not required to teach, but many continue to do so out of necessity. Funding for most graduate students, she says, ends after the second year.

"It's not a hobby--they don't pay you if you don't find a section," Dever says.

But many say Harvard's unusual registration process probably won't change. Undergraduates would be reluctant to give up shopping period in favor of a non-binding preregistration system. And by virtue of being non-binding, such a system might produce the same uncertainty and the same problems.

Clearing House is not expected to affect undergraduates' course choices, Neel says. But, he says, it will make life somewhat easier for administrators in both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the GSAS who must help match professors with TFs.

Neel expects two very busy periods for the program: Around Wednesday of next week, when professors begin to estimate course size, and after shopping period, when class sizes are more or less set. "Our success will be in providing a flow of information," he says.

The project won't end after all the TFs and classes are matched. Neel says Clearing House workers will follow up on their placements, checking with departments and interviewing students who participated in the program.

"We thought that we didn't know as much as we might, and we could find out some more," he says.

Kristen E. Poole, a fourth-year English student, was a victim of enrollment uncertainty last year. When the course she expected to teach wound up with fewer students than expected, Poole lost her job and had to find a new position within 24 hours.

This year, things are going better for Poole, who is a TF for Literature and Arts A-40, Professor of English Marjorie Garber's Shakespeare course. Like all other Core courses, Lit and Arts A-40 guarantees jobs for all of its teaching fellows.

"I'm doing this course for two reasons: my specialty is in Renaissance drama and teaching in the Core is guaranteed," she says. "I have a fellowship, but it's job training."

Poole said she thinks Clearing House is "a step in the right direction." However, she warns that the program might categorize graduate students too broadly. As a result, graduate students could end up teaching courses that technically fit their subject areas, but in which they have little actual expertise.

"Last year I was teaching in some courses that were not in my field," Poole says. "I didn't feel I had time to prepare well."

David J. Ellison, a fifth-year economics student who has taught Ec 10 for the past two years, thinks Clearing House will be beneficial.

"I think it sounds like an excellent idea, particularly in small departments where it's not as obvious what courses are there to teach," he says.