Teaching at Cornell can be a challenge -- many introductory courses, particularly in the sciences, host hundreds of students; a diverse student body presents an equally diverse array of learning styles and needs; new faculty arrive with varied degrees of teaching experience; and rookie teaching assistants face student groups every day.

To address these concerns, Cornell has launched the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) as of July 1. The new center will work to strengthen teaching across campus in a multitude of ways, from disseminating research-based best-teaching practices to ensuring that instructors have the support and resources needed to help their students learn better.

"The CTE will respond to the unique needs of the individual colleges, but it also will address universitywide learning and teaching matters," said Michele Moody-Adams, Cornell's vice provost for undergraduate education. "Its staff will work collaboratively with faculty members, teaching assistants, administrators and student-service personnel to advance and sustain a culture that values, rewards and helps to produce excellent teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels."

Cornell's International Teaching Assistant Development Program, Teaching Assistant Development Program, and Faculty Services and Instructional Support, which have been part of Cornell's Center for Learning and Teaching, will move to the CTE. Services that support students directly -- the Learning Strategies Center and Student Disability Services -- will remain in the Center for Learning and Teaching.

A new executive director will be on board no later than September, said Moody-Adams, and additional new hires will follow in the coming years. In the meantime, Richard Kiely, the faculty director of the Cornell Urban Scholars Program and the newly established Cornell Urban Mentor Initiative -- two universitywide, interdisciplinary service-learning programs -- has been appointed director of Teaching Assistant (TA) Development. He will focus on strengthening the skills of Cornell's TAs, who are graduate and undergraduate students, through teaching orientations, a teaching certificate program, professional development, TA student evaluation questionnaires and awards for excellence in teaching.

"Ideally, CTE will also become home to a number of other campuswide initiatives that deal with teaching excellence," said Moody-Adams, such as curriculum development recommended by Cornell's Faculty Diversity Institute. "Though we are still developing the resources, we would eventually hope to be able to offer course-development grants to faculty planning to create new courses designed to encourage innovative thinking about matters of diversity across the curriculum. The grants would be designed to encourage diversity in the content of courses, but also in the design of pedagogical methods that meet the needs of the varied learners who come to Cornell."

In addition, the CTE will offer focused support for Cornell's pilot program in Undergraduate Information Competency, an effort to encourage faculty to help students deepen their research skills beyond Google in undergraduate courses. Initiatives affiliated with Cornell's Teaching and Learning Consortium, which include Information Technology and Cornell University Library support services, also will move to the CTE.

"We're going to develop a variety of methods to encourage innovations that support teaching excellence on campus," said Moody-Adams. "These methods will range from such traditional approaches as offering awards, fellowships and grants and encouraging focused mentoring of new faculty and TAs to assisting academic departments in developing the practice of peer review of teaching, offering professional development workshops, online resources and private consultations, and developing a lending library."

Other services may include assistance with novel ways of assessing student learning, help with the university's accreditation process and assistance in the administration of the teaching component of various faculty grants