A Teaching Professional Development Initiative for Graduate TAs and Postdocs

From 2012 to 2015, a campus-wide team of educators from the Cornell University Graduate School and its now Future Faculty and Academic Careers office and the now Center for Teaching Innovation developed practical training programs in assessment of student learning for graduate students and postdocs.

Our motivation was the need to prepare the next generation of faculty for the full scope of their future roles, including developing teaching skills. Recent surveys and reports indicate the need to train faculty who are capable of planning for and assessing student learning outcomes from the first day in the classroom.

We designed the PREPARE initiative with two main goals:

1. To expand professional development opportunities for future faculty from all fields through a new series of workshops and internship opportunities
2. To bring attention to the central role of assessment in training and retaining talented undergraduate students in science and humanities disciplines by supporting learning communities of graduate TAs and their faculty course leaders.

This website is intended as both a resource to learn more, and a place to find information about past events and programs related to the theme of assessing student learning. We gratefully acknowledge leadership of Dean Emerita of the Graduate School, Dr. Barbara Knuth, and support from the Council of Graduate Schools, Teagle Foundation, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Photo Credits: Cornell University Photography – Lindsay France, Jason Koski, and Robert Barker