All CBB Ph.D. students are required to fulfill the BBS graduate training requirement of serving as a Teaching Fellow (TF) for the equivalent of two TF10 level courses (TF10 = 10 hours per week). It is strongly recommended that students wait until after qualifying to complete these appointments.
Teaching provides the student the opportunity to develop teaching skills under the guidance of faculty. Attendance at all classes and discussion sessions is essential. There are two different levels of TF at Yale, distinguished from each other based on the number of hours per week. If a student serves as a TF10 level (10 hour per week), they must teach two semesters to complete the teaching requirement. Most courses fall into this category. Students are not allowed to teach two courses simultaneously. A small number of courses are at the TF20 level (20 hours per week). In this case, a student would only need to teach one course to satisfy the teaching requirement. TFs and faculty should remain clear on what is expected of their assignment, and it is imperative that TFs are aware of exam deadlines and make arrangements with faculty in case there should be any conflicts.
As an interdepartmental program, CBB allows teaching assignments in a number of departments. The CBB registrar maintains a list of all the courses in which CBB students have been TFs which serves as a useful starting point for finding an appointment. If students are interested in teaching outside BBS, e.g., Computer Science, Bioengineering, Statistics, etc. they should contact the registrar within each program.
In June of each year, a list of available TF opportunities in the fall and spring semesters within the BBS departments is emailed to all CBB students. Students who wish to teach in the following academic year should fill out the included online form indicating which courses they would like to TF in by the given deadline (or preferably as soon as possible as class requests fill up quickly). Students should consider contacting faculty well in advance of the selection notice to convey their interest in assisting in specific courses. Students should also notify the CBB registrar of confirmed teaching positions.
Examples of courses in which CBB students have been TFs include the following:
- CBB 645b: Statistical Methods in Genetics and Bioinformatics
- CBB 750b: Core Topics in Biomedical Informatics
- CBB 752a: Biomedical Data Science: Mining and Modeling
- MATH 215b: Introduction to Management Science: Probabilistic Models
- MCDB 200b: Molecular Biology
- STAT 538a: Probability and Statistics for Scientists
- STAT 660b: Multivariate Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences