Honoring teaching fellows
Once a year, the deans of the Graduate School and Yale College honor outstanding graduate student teaching fellows at a celebratory dinner. Nominated by the undergraduates they teach and the faculty whom they assist, Prize Teaching Fellows (PTFs) are selected by the director of the Teaching Fellow Program, the director of the Graduate Teaching Center, and an associate dean of Yale College. When the current crop of 17 PTFs gathered in the Hall of Graduate Studies late last semester, Dean Peter Salovey urged them to "inspire students to learn what they love, to find what they want to study lifelong. Nothing could be more important than helping students find their passion." Dean Jon Butler said, "Opening the world to other people is what teaching is about. It's a privilege to do this." This year's PTFs come from a wide range of fields, including chemistry, physics, math, comparative literature, history, and music. Letters of nomination cited many qualities embodied by these extraordinary student-teachers, including warmth, brilliance, insight, humor, enthusiasm, and kindness.
And baby makes three
"Being a graduate student is hard. Parenting is hard. Doing both at the same time is exponentially harder," Assistant Dean Robert Harper-Mangels told a gathering of about 50 graduate students who attended a program titled "Students Contemplating Becoming Parents." The session, organized by McDougal Family Fellow Susan Caplan (Nursing) and Social Fellow Jonathan Cox (EPH) and hosted by Lisa Brandes, director of student life, opened with presentations by Graduate School staff about the practical support Yale offers both male and female doctoral students who give birth or adopt a child. These include an unusually generous "Parental Support and Relief Policy" (see below), as well as 100 percent healthcare coverage for students and their children. Following the staff presentations, an informal panel of parents -- all current or recent graduate students -- spoke about the challenges of raising children while progressing to degree, and took questions from the audience about time-management, juggling priorities, and finding good child care.
According to the terms of the Parental Support and Relief Policy, PhD students who wish to suspend their academic responsibilities when they become parents may do so during or following the semester in which the birth or adoption occurs. For the whole of that semester, students remain registered, receive their full financial aid package, and have departmental academic expectations modified to suit their situation. Students are entitled to full relief for at least an eight-week period. PhD students who have used the Parental Support and Relief Policy may receive an additional eight weeks of stipend, funded by the Graduate School, at the end of their fifth year, when financial support from the Graduate School generally terminates. Additionally, their academic clock will stop for one semester, which effectively adds an additional semester of time towards degree at the end of what otherwise would have been the student's sixth year. Yale is one of very few universities to offer such a sweeping policy. (For the Yale Alumni Magazine's report on the policy, see "Grad School Offers Relief to Students with Kids," Light & Verity, September/October 2007.)
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