Teaching Requirements

From the Graduate School’s Programs and Policies:

Because the Graduate School considers teaching experience to be an integral part of graduate education, doctoral stdents receive financial aid packages that include teaching fellowships. In many programs there are specific years when students are expected to teach. For example, most humanities and social science students will teach in their third and fourth years. In the natural sciences, the timing of teaching is earlier or is flexible across several years. When requested by the student for compelling academic reasons, these patterns may be adjusted with the permission of an associate dean and the director of graduate studies contingent on the student’s satisfactory academic progress and on sufficient course enrollment.

  • Students normally serve as teaching fellows for several terms to acquire professional training. All students are required to teach the equivalent of a TF-20, usually as two TF-10s (regardless of the nature of their funding). This teaching is typically completed in the first two years of study, although the actual timing is at the discretion of the DGS. Students who require additional support from the Graduate School after their second year will be required to teach an additional TF-10 for each term of support, up to a maximum of TF-80 within the first five years (including the academic teaching requirement).

  • In cases where there is mutual agreement between the student and the DGS, some of the teaching requirement can be fulfilled during the first or second years. The TF units can then be split across two courses. The Department encourages students to consider this option, both for the experience of seeing coursework from the teaching side and as a gentle way to revise basic concepts for the qualifying exams.

  • The Graduate Teaching Center offers further ways for students to improve their teaching skills. For those seeking an academic career, the ability to teach well is essential.

  • See https://gsas.yale.edu/academic-professional-development/teaching-fellow-program for more details about the Teaching Fellow Program and the teaching requirement.