Advising, Teaching To Top CUE's Agenda

Student and faculty leaders of the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) said yesterday that improving academic advising and teaching in sections will be the main topics on their agenda this year.

The chairman of the Undergraduate Council's Academics Committee also said at a CUE meeting yesterday that he also hopes to reinvigorate student-faculty department committees, to try to increase student input in the tenure process, and to establish separate sections in Core courses for concentrators and non-concentrators.

"Our main concerns are advising," said Andreas Beroutsos '88. "On the department level, we want to see to what extent the departments have set up a coherent advising process."

Beroutsos said he is seeking to improve advising at the departmental level by establishing faculty-student committees in more departments. "Only about one-third of the departments have these committees, and every department is required to have one," Beroutsos said.

Beroutsos also said that he hopes to improve the quality of sections and section leaders in many of the larger courses.

"We are not really sure if the people who are teaching the sections are the most appropriate," he said. Too often, Beroutsos said, faculty whose courses are oversubscribed "end up employing a divinity student or a graduate student in chemistry for Ec 10."

Newly appointed Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education David Pilbeam said that he may ask the faculty to move up the date for fall registration and to shorten shopping periods to one week so that faculty will have more time to hire competent teaching fellows.

"The issue is whether there is any way that the faculty can hire teaching fellows enough ahead of time so that they can go through training periods," Pilbeam said.

CUE Guide editors also said at the meeting they are considering including reviews of sophomore tutorials in future guides.

"I would very much like sophomore tutorials to be reviewed in some way," Pilbeam said. "If we agree on what to do, we'll put it into action for next year's guide."