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Center for Teaching Innovation

Instructor Roles

At Cornell, as at many research universities, we come to the role of instructor from a wide range of backgrounds and prior preparation. Becoming a skillful, effective teacher who prioritizes student learning is a reflective practice that benefits from a willingness to experiment, solicit feedback, and seek out knowledge about teaching and learning.

Faculty & Instructors

If you are at the beginning of your teaching career, the Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI) offers many teaching support and development resources. At later stages in your career, new research on teaching and learning, as well as discussing teaching with others, may take on greater importance. Throughout your career, you may want to work to enhance your understanding of diversity issues and inclusive teaching strategies. CTI can help you identify resources for all of these pursuits.

The Dean of Faculty provides a Faculty Handbook with teaching policies and guidelines.

Navigating a professional career where teaching is one of several components in your portfolio can be challenging. When teaching is your primary responsibility, making the time to reflect, grow, and try new things can seem daunting as well. These challenges are inherent in teaching, and we offer support for this process. While the specifics of your professional appointment will dictate your teaching context to some degree (e.g., topic, student group, frequency), you have many options for developing your teaching philosophy and connecting with your students.

Working with a teaching team (faculty roles)

Large enrollment courses at Cornell often involve a teaching team of multiple faculty, graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants, postdocs, and course administrators. Communication is crucial to ensuring consistent policies and fairness for students, as well as maintaining a positive experience for all members of the teaching team. It is unfair to students if there is one teaching assistant who is an "easy grader," accepts late homework, and provides an exam review sheet, when the other teaching assistants do not. Strive to provide consistent guidelines, communication with students, course resources, and grading expectations. We recommend the following:

  • Foster a sense of collaboration among team members. Spend time at the beginning of the semester discussing common goals and learning outcomes for the course. Ask for frequent feedback from team members; often they may be aware of issues with students that need to come to the attention of the team.
  • Spend time during the first week of class introducing the teaching team to your students and highlighting the strengths that they bring to the course (e.g., research specializations or experiences). Consider providing photos and short bios, which can be posted in a slide and/or on Canvas.
  • Experiences on a teaching team are professional development opportunities. Faculty or more senior teaching assistants can serve as mentors for others. Spend time discussing effective teaching practices.
  • Establish regular meeting times and communication channels with the teaching team throughout the semester.
  • Provide clear guidelines and expectations for different roles within the teaching team.
  • Ask team members to block off time on their calendars for exam proctoring and for grading. Let people know about grading deadlines at the beginning of the semester.
  • Employ methods to ensure fair and consistent grading, such as using common rubrics, blind grading (without student names), comparing graded assignments to calibrate grading, etc.

Teaching Assistants & Postdocs with Teaching Duties

Teaching assistants are central to teaching at Cornell. Questions to ask your instructor of record include: Do we have a grading rubric? What do you expect my role to be? Do you have pointers for establishing effective team teaching dynamics?

Across the university, there are many teaching roles: Teaching assistants sometimes work in multiple capacities, including grading; leading discussions, labs, or recitations; conducting office hours; assisting studio sessions; or teaching as an instructor of record. Postdocs can design and teach courses, individually or in collaboration.

Balancing these roles can be both challenging and highly rewarding. There is an opportunity to explore how to collaborate as a member of a team, help undergraduates achieve the course learning outcomes, and navigate your current role while preparing and exploring possibilities for a future teaching career. Regardless of your role, we encourage being open to inquiry, exploring the research on teaching, and connecting with others who share this interest.

Try This

Explore these options:

  • Outline a professional development plan on teaching and learning. Begin by reflecting on the values, skills, and knowledge that you currently bring to teaching and learning. Then clarify areas in which you would like to learn more in the near future. Explore the range of institutional data Cornell offers in the University Factbook. For example, our Diversity dashboards may help you gain a better understanding of Cornell students. How can you authentically express your teaching identity by sharing and taking actions anchored in your experiences and personality?
  • Reflect on how you establish authority in the classroom. In addition to creating a welcoming, friendly environment, you will benefit as an instructor from having a plan for introducing yourself to students to them better understand your preparation for the role. What might you share with students to establish your credentials, research or field experiences, and enthusiasm for the subject matter?
  • Build in strategies to gather and reflect on student feedback about their perceptions of what is working and what might be improved in the course while it is still in process and there is opportunity to consider corrections.
  • Seek out teaching development opportunities in your department, as well as in your college, across campus (e.g., CTI, Engaged Cornell), and within your disciplinary society.
  • Work to develop a network of peers and mentors who are also committed to excellence in teaching.

Selected Resources