About Us
Founded in 2017, the Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI) supports Cornell University teaching community members, from teaching assistants and postdoctoral fellows, to lecturers, to professors, with a full complement of individualized services, programs, institutes, and campus-wide initiatives. We do this through confidential developmental consultations across the academic career span, roles, and disciplines. In addition to instructors, we team with departments, schools and colleges, and related units to create and sustain multicultural, rigorous, and vibrant learning environments. To catalyze academic innovation, our team brings a deep knowledge of educational research on teaching, learning, and technologies along with a spirit of curiosity and collaboration. The CTI reports to the vice provost for academic innovation.
A Message from the Executive Director
For the past year, Cornell has been undertaking an ambitious project of rethinking the role of higher education. A period of intense technological change, along with a changing relationship between higher education and the federal government, and concerns over the value of higher education, have all been drivers of Cornell’s attempt, via the Committee on the Future of the American University, to outline a compelling vision of education for the next fifty years.
What is clear to us here at the Center for Teaching Innovation is that this vision will have the educating mission of the University at its core, and so we turn out work towards essential questions, including but not limited to: How do we better educate young students to graduate and go forth to engage in a complex and dynamic world? What skills and attributes do we need to cultivate in students to help them make a meaningful impact in the world?
At CTI, we relish these conversations. We love the opportunity to think deeply about what makes education valuable and worthwhile, and how we can contribute to realizing that vision. So while we continue, day-by-day, to offer programs, workshops, and consultations, we are also spending time this year reflecting on how to sustain and deepen the best learning experiences Cornell can offer. These reflections will help to guide our work in the coming years, as we continue to support faculty and graduate students in their teaching, and through them, undergraduate learning at Cornell.
Rob Vanderlan
Executive Director
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