Life for graduate students at any university is far from easy--full of worries about dissertations, career prospects and funding.

But at Harvard, graduate students sometimes face an additional concern: The stressful beginning-of-the-semester process of finding teaching fellow positions.

This year, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) administration is trying to ease the strain. The GSAS will run an experimental program geared toward making teaching fellow selection easier for both graduate students and professors.

The Teaching Fellow Information Clearing House, located in Lehman Hall, is designed to take some of the uncertainty out of the teaching fellow job search. The program, which begins tomorrow, will operate for the next few weeks.

According to Tom H. Neel, associate dean for GSAS administration and finance, the Clearing House will attempt to compile a list of courses that need TFs and a list of available teachers. Both professors and TFs can then use the information to find who--and what--they need.

"It's an experiment. I expect its impact will be small; however, everyone I've talked to thinks its a good idea," Neel says.

Students can participate in Clearing House by signing up at registration, Neel says. Once they express their availability to teach, they will be grouped by subject area.

Harvard has never had a real system for finding TFs, according to Neel. In the spring, each department asks graduate students to apply for teaching fellow positions. Professors produce approximate numbers of TFs needed and receive the names of eligible students.

"The Core and each department with courses did the best with what they could find," Neel says. "The old system worked extremely well--with predictable courses."

But until students turn in their study cards, well after courses begin, those numbers are guesses, at best. Harvard's traditional shopping period creates an atmosphere of uncertainty. While some courses have predictable enrollments, others draw varying numbers of students.

The result is a perennial period of scrambling and stress. Professors of over-enrolled classes frantically search for qualified graduate students, while teaching fellows in under-enrolled courses face the prospect of losing their jobs.

That's a frightening possibility for graduate students, many of whom depend on teaching jobs for financial support. According to the GSAS teaching fellows department, 1081 graduate students worked as TFs last year.

Carolyn M. Dever, a fifth-year English graduate student, says English students are not required to teach, but many continue to do so out of necessity. Funding for most graduate students, she says, ends after the second year.

"It's not a hobby--they don't pay you if you don't find a section," Dever says.

But many say Harvard's unusual registration process probably won't change. Undergraduates would be reluctant to give up shopping period in favor of a non-binding preregistration system. And by virtue of being non-binding, such a system might produce the same uncertainty and the same problems.