In 2018 the Teaching and Learning Center launched the initial Teach@CUNY Summer Institute for CUNY Graduate Center students in the summer before their first teaching assignments. Now in its third year, the Institute aims to prepare new college instructors not only for their upcoming teaching responsibilities, but for a lifetime as engaged, committed educators. Each class of Graduate Teaching Fellows will work with approximately 50,000 CUNY undergraduates over a three-year span and, overall, Graduate Center students teach approximately 150,000 CUNY undergraduates every year. The Institute welcomes these scholars into a community of faculty committed to CUNY’s mission to serve the whole people of New York.

The 2020 the Teach@CUNY Summer Institute is open to all first-year doctoral students, regardless of fellowship status. The Institute has been wholly redesigned—in both structure and content— in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The event is designed and facilitated by the staff of the Teaching and Learning Center, who collectively have taught dozens of courses across CUNY and who spend each academic year working with GC student instructors in a variety of ways to support their teaching. This group has worked since mid-March 2020 to reconceptualize the Institute to address the challenges of teaching at a beleaguered university during a time of crisis, and to acknowledge the likelihood that much instruction in the 2020-2021 academic year will happen online.

The TLC is grateful to The Charina Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences, The CUNY Central Office of Student Affairs, The Graduate Center Office of Student Affairs, The Graduate Center Provost’s Office, and The Graduate Center Office of Institutional Advancement for their strong support of this Institute. The TLC is also grateful to the Center for the Advanced Study in Education for collaborating on an ongoing evaluation of all activities around the Institute.