Report aims to redefine teaching at Yale

By Joshua Benton

In a move that could completely change the way teaching is performed at Yale, a University committee has recommended a series of changes in the Graduate School that could eliminate sections, cap large lecture classes, and make currently standard components of an undergraduate education optional.

The Kutzinski Report, as the recommendations are collectively known, calls for Yale to stop paying graduate students for teaching sections, which has serious implications both for undergraduates and for the court battle the University now faces against the National Labor Relations Board.

The 32-page report of the Teaching Fellowship Program Review Committee--named the Kutzinski Report after the committee's chair, English professor Vera Kutzinski--is due to be released Monday morning and has already begun stirring controversy among faculty, administrators, and GESO members seeking unionization.

"There's absolutely no justification for this sort of complete overhaul of the system," GESO co-chair Antony Dugdale, GRD '99, said.

Equal pay for equal time

The meat of the proposal recommends changing the way Yale hires graduate student teachers. Under the current system, graduate students receive a stipend for teaching sections, usually about $4,000 per semester. In most cases, not teaching a section means not getting paid, so grad students often teach as many as a dozen sections during their years at Yale. One side effect is that students often spend so much time teaching that they put off their dissertations, and end up spending extra years enrolled at Yale--which can cost the University significantly.

According to the suggestions of the Kutzinski Report, the payment of stipends should be separated from the act of teaching, so that each student receives the same amount of money, regardless of whether he or she teaches a section. All graduate students would be required to teach a minimum of two and a maximum of four sections during their years at Yale, a major reduction from current levels. Teacher training programs would be mandated for graduate students in every department.

Most importantly, the report makes a clear philosophical statement that graduate students should teach in order to train themselves in the art of teaching--not to help their departments staff undergraduate classes.

"Departmental staffing needs must not factor into determining how much graduate students should teach during their time at Yale," the report reads. "Departments should restructure themselves in such a way as to reduce the usage of graduate students as Teaching Fellows."

But with Yale currently committed to a freeze on faculty hiring, and graduate students not teaching nearly as many sections, who will be teaching?

Slim pickings

The effects of the committee's decisions on undergraduates remain ambiguous. If graduate students are not allowed to teach more than four sections during their six or seven years, there quite simply will not be enough teachers to go around.

"I know people who teach 10 or 15 sections during their time here," Dugdale said. "They'll start teaching in their second year, teach two sections a semester, and teach after their fourth year."

Especially in the social sciences and humanities, limiting the sections a TA can teach would likely mean that large lecture classes would have to do without sections. Departments would be forced to implement creative methods for further stretching faculty resources, while the Administration continues to commit itself to maintaining a static number of professors in each department.

In the event of a TA shortage in his department, "we would ask more professors to take sections of their own," History Chair Robin Winks said. "We might have some courses that just would not have sections, although I don't think that's a good idea. We could increase the number of students desirable in a section."

Winks added that large lectures, like Jonathan Spence's, SY '61, GRD '65,

"History of Modern China," could have optional sections with many fewer TAs, or even just be capped very tightly. In some disciplines, graduate students might be hired as graders but not allowed to lead a section. Some undergrads could even lead sections, as several are doing this semester for the highly enrolled Electrical Engineering 101b class.

Some administrators said they thought the proposal would not hurt undergraduate education at Yale. "It's not obvious to me that the section format is the best way of structuring a course," Graduate School Dean Thomas Appelquist said. "It's a major concern for us, preserving undergraduate education." Edwin Duval, director of Graduate Studies of the French Department and a former member of the Kutzinski committee, said he "did not believe that undergraduate offerings would suffer as a result of the proposal."

Some graduate students remained skeptical. "If there's a certain amount of work in undergraduate teaching that needs to get done, and graduate students are limited in what they can do, there will be undergraduate teaching that will not happen," Dugdale said.

All in the timing

The report arrives just weeks after the National Labor Relations Board filed suit against Yale for unfair labor practices against GESO members, and many graduate students are crying foul.

"It's fairly clear this whole report is primarily driven as a response to the NLRB," Dugdale said. "There's no justification for changes this radical other than the NLRB."

The crux of the NLRB case against Yale rests on whether or not graduate students are considered primarily students or employees of the University. If they are employees, they all allowed by federal law to unionize, and Yale could face substantial penalties for its actions during the 1996 GESO grade strike.

By completely separating financial aid concerns from leading sections, the Kutzinski proposal would essentially prevent graduate students from being paid for teaching, a move which would bolster Yale's claim that GESO members are indeed students, not employees.

By limiting the number of sections that graduate students can teach, the report's proposals would also undercut one of GESO's strongest claims: that graduate students are responsible for a very high percentage of the teaching that goes on at Yale.

Appelquist adamantly denied any connection between the committee's findings and the current NLRB lawsuit. "This proposal was generated by a student-faculty committee formed more than a year ago," he said. He admitted there was "a certain parallelism" in the timing of the report, but added that the timing was completely driven by the committee's own schedule.

The report itself notes that the committee's final purpose differs significantly from its original aim. In January 1996, the committee was founded with nine members and a close focus on the issue of TA equity. Some graduate students had filed grievances stating that TAs in some departments received the same pay as those in other departments while doing much less work, usually because they taught only one section per semester instead of two. "The committee started out concentrating on the 3.5 level [equity] issue," then-committee member Jennifer Marshall, GRD '97, said.

Then, last fall, the committee's membership changed radically--of the original nine, only Kutzinski remained--and, as the report states, "a set of broader questions regarding university-wide implementation of graduate student teaching began to emerge."

Some graduate students said that the Kutzinski Report, which calls for a complete and radical overhaul of graduate teaching, only suggests such changes because of the role they could play in the NLRB ruling.

"I tried to figure out the pedagogical rationale for this kind of move, and I honestly can't think of any," Dugdale said. "The goals of this report could be easily met in the current system." This month's GESO Voice newsletter echoes that sentiment, stating, "Only Yale's legal strategy demands that the current system be discarded."

Primary effects

Undergraduates could see the first effects of the Kutzinski Report as soon as next semester. The document calls for stricter testing of English-language ability for graduate students hoping to teach; undergrads, particularly those enrolled in the sciences, have long complained about incomprehensible foreign-born TAs. It also recommends, beginning in the fall, limiting TAs to teaching only one section per semester. Many of the report's other significant proposals could not be implemented until 1998, but, Appelquist said, "We've now started talking about all the recommendations."

Department chairs first learned of the proposal on Tuesday, and Appelquist said that the general response was one of approval. "The general thrust was very well received by the chairs and the DGSes. It quickly developed into a conversation about specifics." A select number of graduate students learned about the proposal on Wednesday, at an impromptu lunch with Appelquist.

Appelquist emphasized that the document is simply a report, and that any real policy changes would have to be approved by his office before taking effect. "I think it's a very interesting report, with some very far-reaching ideas," he said. "But I think we will have to discuss these issues for some time before we see what we can do. As with any big, important report of this sort--and this is a big report--you find people with a whole variety of opinions."