Faculty Council Debates Teaching Post

The Faculty Council last week considered creating a new teaching post to help alleviate a shortage of teaching fellows.

William J. Skocpol, associate professor of Physics and a member of the council, submitted a proposal calling for the hiring of "teaching associates" to teach sections and tutorials.

Under Skocpol's proposal, teaching associates would be appointed on an annual basis, with contracts renewable a maximum of three times. The positions would be open only to persons who have received doctorate degrees.

Departments would not be allowed to hire teaching associates until all available teaching fellows and Faculty members had filled teaching responsibilities, Skocpol said.

Altruism

The position is "not attractive to everyone, but it may meet the needs of some, and it would help fill gaps in the availability of more traditional instructional staff who would normally teach tutorials and sections," Skocpol said last week.

"I'm glad to see the Faculty Council focusing on the problems of teaching, and particularly ways to satisfy our teaching needs without stretching out the amount of time graduate students would teach." Edward L. Keenan, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a member of the council, said yesterday.

The council had considered at its last meeting a proposal calling for an increase in the number of years that graduate students would be permitted to serve as teaching fellows. Current rules limit that amount of time to four years.

Most members of the council disapproved of that plan as a way to increase the number of available teaching staff.

But Skocpol said most council members liked his proposal, which will come up for discussion again later this month.

In other action, the council postponed until fall further consideration of establishing a concentration in literature. The council had discussed the proposal last month and had scheduled it as a discussion item for Wednesday's Faculty meeting.

But the group of Faculty members designing the concentration requested a delay so that a Faculty vote on the issue could come sooner after the discussion.

The council also postponed further discussion of changes in the language requirement. An ad hoc Faculty committee examining the requirement had presented a proposal to the council at its last meeting requiring that all students, even those who take a full year of foreign language, pass a proficiency test in language.

Council members decided to delay consideration of the proposal so that the committee could clarify several details