Teaching is a fundamental part of our professional training. Graduate students in EEB are expected to teach a minimum of three semesters while at Yale. The DGS works with each student to provide a teaching experience that is both diverse and matches the academic goals of the student. Students are encouraged to teach a mixture of introductory and intermediate courses in ecology and evolution, organismal and biodiversity courses, and laboratory and lecture courses.
In the late spring of each year, graduate students in EEB are sent a survey asking them a) if they expect to teach in the following year and, if they plan to teach, b) to rank by preference the courses they would like to teach.
The DGS also talks to faculty teaching courses that require TFs with specialized background (e.g., Ornithology, Terrestrial Arthropods, and Field Ecology) about which students would be qualified to teach those courses.
Then the DGS tries their best to match student preferences with faculty needs across the entire curriculum. The DGS also tries to balance opportunities for students to teach with their advisor and in high demand courses at least once during their teaching years. For example, there are typically more students requesting to teach General Ecology (EEB220) and Evolutionary Biology (EEB225) than there are TF slots available.
In a typical semester, 80-90% of students end up teaching their preferred course. Only under very rare circumstances have students had to teach anything other than their 1st or 2nd choice course.