Teaching

Students may start to teach in the second year. The requirement is two semesters as a teaching assistant (TA) in any of numerous lecture, laboratory, and seminar courses offered at the undergraduate, graduate, and medical school levels. Students can also receive credit for teaching science to New Haven middle school students through the Science Education Outreach Program (http://www.seop.yale.edu/). For further information, contact the director of the program, Paula Kavathas, Professor of Laboratory Medicine, Immunobiology, and Genetics (785-6223; paula.kavathas@yale.edu).

Courses having TA positions are listed on the “TA Position Form” available from the BBS office. During the summer, students formally request TA assignments by indicating their top 3 choices on this form, which they submit to the Cell Biology Registrar. The form in turn will be forwarded to the department giving the course that is the student’s first choice. The instructor in charge of the course ultimately chooses the TA’s. Students are encouraged beforehand to seek out the instructor of any course to express their interest in being a TA for that course (e.g., it is okay while taking a course to approach the instructor about being a TA the next time the course is offered).

Students may elect to teach beyond the 2 semesters requirement. Such extra teaching should not take time away from thesis research, however. It should also be remembered that for nearly all students (with the exception of those having outside fellowships) support in years 4 and beyond is provided by the thesis advisor’s research grant. Thus, the student contemplating teaching beyond the teaching requirement must first discuss the matter with the thesis advisor. Priority for assignment as a TA in a Cell Biology course is given to a student needing to fulfill the teaching requirement over a student electing to teach beyond the teaching requirement.