A Better Harvard In Three Steps

I am a recent Harvard graduate with some ideas for improving undergraduate education. My suggestions are:

* Institute mandatory teacher training for incoming faculty.

* Institute a spoken English requirement for all incoming faculty.

* Provide mechanisms to encourage tenured faculty to be more responsive to undergraduates' needs.

The first two suggestions would insure that every professor who teaches at the University would be equipped with a minimal set of teaching skills. This would be especially important for those educated in other countries who are accustomed to different educational systems.

A spoken English requirement is necessary to insure that classes are not taught by people whose English is incomprehensible. The purpose of this requirement is not to prevent the University from hiring processors whose native language is not English. There are many professors with slight to moderate accents who are perfectly good teachers.

The University can also provide incentives for tenured faculty to improve their teaching without discarding the tenure system. Possibilities include mandating CUE Guide evaluations (or comparable evolutions if that is not possible) in all undergraduate classes (and possibly graduate classes as well), providing more teaching awards, and requiring that professors allow their classes to be videotaped by the Bok center every so often.