Pre-Candidacy Teaching Opportunities

The two routine administrative channels to secure teaching positions are through the Social Sciences Collegiate Division (SSCD) or through departmental assignments. Neither the SSCD nor individual departments assign students to teaching positions automatically. The SSCD will open its applications for 2020—21 in early March. The Collegiate Division administrator is Gretchen Holmes Lyons. The deadline to apply to March 31. The SSCD employs an on-line process for applying for a teaching position in the Social Sciences core sequences or civilization sequences.

In seeking teaching assignments in departmental undergraduate courses, students should consult department administrative assistants, and especially faculty. Students with a strong interest and training in humanistic inquiry, might also seek positions in the Humanities Collegiate Division. For teaching positions in departmental undergraduate courses in the Humanities, contact the department administrative assistants as well as Humanities faculty.

Course Internships and Lectureships in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division

Interns serve in the College’s Social Sciences Core or Civilization sequences. Interns are apprentices to the faculty in whose course they have been appointed. They are expected to learn from the supervising faculty member how to teach a course in the Core Curriculum to a small number of students in a seminar-style discussion class. Members of the faculty who have interns assigned to them retain full responsibility for all aspects of the course. Interns may be asked to assist the supervising faculty member in certain regards, but their main responsibility is to learn how to teach the course on their own.

Graduate students who have completed internships in SSCD Core courses are eligible to apply for appointment as freestanding lecturers in the sequence in which they interned. Lecturers have full responsibility for teaching one or more sections of an SSCD Core course in the social sciences or civilization studies for one or more quarters. Within limits established by tradition, faculty consensus, and a syllabus of shared readings, lecturers have discretion to teach the course as they prefer. In order to maintain the intellectual and pedagogical cohesion of the curriculum, lecturers are expected to participate in the meetings of the staff teaching the course to which they have been appointed.