Grad Students To Work With Professors To Learn On The Job Teaching Skills

Next spring two graduate students will teach alongside senior professors in a program designed to help students learn teaching skills.

Through the Mentorship Grants program, the two students will receive $4300 to teach a regular College course with a professor, said Steven E. Ozment, associate dean for undergraduate education who is coordinating the program.

Scott Scullion, a fourth year student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, will offer Classics 95 along with Albert Henrichs, Eliot Professor of Greek Literature.

In addition, Martin Melaver, also a fourth year student at GSAS, will pair up with Robert J. Kiely, Loker Professor of English, to teach an English course entitled "The PreNovel: Poetics and Dialectics."

Henrichs, chairman of the Classics Department, said he and Scullion will focus on the use of religion in works of Greek tragedy by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripedes.

"Overall I think it's an excellent idea because it seems to satisfy and serve several constituencies," Kiely said. Undergraduates benefit from having two points of view in class and a greater chance of interaction with the teachers, he said.

For the graduate student, the program will provide better pay and lighter teaching loads, said Henrichs. "It's also a way of getting some teaching skills across," he said.

Kiely, Adams House master, said he and Melaver will "look at early prose narratives that nowadays remind us of novels." The class will examine works written before the 18th century advent of the novel that have qualities that are traditionally associated with the novel, Kiely said.

The program was originally intended to offer grants to eight students, but only received two applicants because it got off to a late start, Ozment said. "I've had eight or 10 faculty tell me that if they [the grants] would have been out last spring" they might have applied, he said.

"Next year, the mentorship grants will continue in both the fall and spring terms," said Ozment.

Ozment, who has repeatedly called for the University to pay closer attention to the quality of graduate student teaching, says he hopes this program will help the students learn teaching skills first-hand.