Graduate students air their views at Kutzinski forum

By Emily Gold

On Wed., Mar. 5, graduate students had their first chance to react to the Kutzinski Report in an open forum led by Dean of the Graduate School Thomas Appelquist."This is not graduate school policy yet by any means," he told a packed audience of graduate and undergraduate students.

Since its release two weeks ago, the Kutzinski Report has taken the graduate student community by surprise. With its recommendations to issue a uniform stipend to every graduate student and to restrict the number of sections a grad student can teach, the Kutzinski plan represents a major departure from Yale's current teaching system.

Despite his assurance that the report's findings would not automatically become policy, Appelquist admitted that he agreed with some of the report's proposals. "I kind of like this direction. I think it's really worth looking into," Appelquist commented.

Many grad students expressed objections to the report's recommendation on stipends. "What is the motivation for decoupling the stipend from the teaching?" GESO co-chair Antony Dugdale, GRD '99, asked. "Given that there are different amounts of teaching needed for different departments, but that all grad students will be receiving the same stipend, either there will be workload inequities or cuts in teaching," he said.

This concern especially applies to foreign language teaching fellows, many of whom teach beginning and intermediate language courses which meet daily. "Is it fair to pay someone who teaches five days a week the same amount as someone who only teaches once a week?" Brendan Walsh, GRD '99, asked.

Others argued that limiting grad students to teaching a maximum of four sections would hurt education at both the graduate and undergraduate level. "I have now taught eight sections,"Anita Gallers, GRD '98, said. "Under this plan, my teaching experience would be halved." Dugdale said the plan would hurt undergraduate education. "My fear is that the University will try to skimp on the amount of teaching that gets done, by capping lectures or by cutting sections,"
he stated.

Appelquist recognized that many questions about the plan's implementation still remain."There is still a long process ahead of us, in which it is responded to not only by the graduate school community, but by Yale College."

Appelquist said he remained positive in his outlook on the report, however."In general, I am picking up on a lot of positive sentiment about the plan from the faculty," he said. "There's a strong feeling in favor of creating a teaching fellow program which serves as part of the educational program."

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