CTI Graduate & Postdoc Programming Update
Spring 2023
Dear Colleagues,

I hope your semester is going well so far. We were thrilled by the positive response to our Course Design Institute this semester and look forward to seeing many of you at our upcoming University-Wide Teaching Conference on April 22! We are excited to have Professor Durba Ghosh, History, College of Arts & Sciences, as our plenary speaker. Prof. Ghosh will talk about her experiences with inclusive teaching in her courses at Cornell.

We’re also excited to announce that two of our CTI Graduate Teaching Fellows, Kimberly Hochstedler (Ph.D. candidate, Statistics & Data Science) and Rink Tacoma-Fogal (Ph.D. Candidate, Animal Science) were recently awarded the Belonging at Cornell mini grant for graduate students. With their grant, they established the first Advanced Graduate Teaching Cohort, which consists of twenty graduate students, selected through a competitive application process. Congratulations!
 
Finally, as we approach mid-semester, we’d like to remind you of some of CTI’s upcoming events and the many teaching resources available through the spring and summer. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if there are any topics that you would like us to offer in the future.
 
We hope you have a restorative Spring Break!

Best wishes,
Derina

Derina S. Samuel, PhD
Associate Director, Graduate Student Development
CTI Fellows' Teaching Tip:
Below is a compiled list of four mid-semester tips for time management. We've found these to be helpful and encourage you to try them out:

  • Use horizontal grading:
  • Grade assignments question-by-question, rather than student-by-student, to focus your attention on a single topic and save time.
  • Set time limits:
  • Keep track of the time you spend grading. Give yourself a hard cutoff on the amount of time you spend per assignment and stick to it.
  • Bank common responses:
  • When providing typed feedback, create a document with your responses to common student mistakes. Copy and past these comments as needed.
  • Break projects into manageable chunks:
  • Break up larger projects into smaller tasks that can be completed step-by-step. Consider using a free resource like Trello to help keep you organized.
University-Wide Teaching Conference
Join other Cornell graduate students, postdocs, and TAs to discuss inclusive teaching strategies across disciplines. The conference offers an opportunity for networking and interdisciplinary teaching discussions with faculty and colleagues from across campus.

Saturday April 22, 2023, 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. (in person).
"Generative AI: Classroom Copilot or Pedagogical Disruptor?"
Join Fellows from the Center for Teaching Innovation for a discussion of the promises and challenges generative AI poses to higher education. Open to all graduate students, TAs and postdocs.

Thursday April 13, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
CTI Graduate Teaching Fellows Program
If you're a graduate student with an interest and experience in teaching, we encourage you to apply to be part of CTI’s Graduate Teaching Fellows Program. As a fellow, you'll work closely with CTI staff to design and implement teaching workshops, events, and resources to foster teaching excellence, innovation, and networking across the university.
Inclusive Teaching & Learning Community
Join a five-week summer online learning community, which runs concurrently with the asynchronous Teaching & Learning in the Diverse Classroom course. Open to all graduate students and postdocs.

Thursdays, June 1-29, 2023 from 1:00 - 2:15 p.m.
NEW! Accessibility Guide

The Center for Teaching Innovation has created a new Accessibility Guide to help you to reach more students and build equity and inclusion in your learning environment. This evolving resource aims to bring to light basic accessibility issues and tips for how to solve them, to help you on your journey to making your courses more accessible.
Teaching Portfolio Program

Have you begun working on your teaching portfolio? This program is for anyone who has gone through our GET SET Institutes and would like an opportunity to discuss their teaching practices and strategies for documenting their experiences. 

Register at any time to be part of the CTI Teaching Portfolio Program in order to gain access to resources, consultations, and support for your teaching.
Teaching Assistant Online Orientation

The TA Online Orientation, designed to prepare new graduate teaching assistants for success in their first few weeks of teaching, is a series of self-paced, asynchronous modules that introduce teaching essentials and resources available at Cornell.
Teaching at Cornell Guide

The purpose of the Teaching at Cornell guide is to introduce key aspects of teaching and learning at Cornell University through the lens of the five elements that CTI believes to be critical to instructor success. It is intended to begin, not complete, a dialogue on excellence in teaching and learning.
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