See excellence in action: Real partnerships, remarkable portfolios
Discover how CIRTL postdocs and faculty mentors collaborate to create innovative teaching experiences that benefit both partners. Explore our featured teaching partnerships and browse exemplary learning portfolios that showcase fellows' growth, teaching materials, and reflections—valuable resources as you prepare for your own academic journey.
At my first on-campus interview, the committee actually asked me how much teaching experience I had. Little did they know it was my first time teaching in front of people in the United States, and in English, too! – Ayako, 2022-2023 Fellow
What Can a Partnership Look Like?
Teams work together to design their own co-teaching plans and submit these plans to CIRTL for accountability and record-keeping. They also commit to meeting once a week during the partnership to discuss the course and share feedback with each other, and the teaching mentors agree to write at least one formal observation letter for the postdoc to include in their teaching portfolio.
Featured Teaching Partnerships
Betsy Arnold & Morgan Carter, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Betsy Arnold, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Dr. Morgan Carter, postdoctoral scholar in the School of Plant Sciences, didn’t realize how much their research and teaching interests overlapped until they teamed up to co-teach part of Betsy’s live online graduate course, PLP500: Principles of Plant Microbiology in Spring 2021. Because Betsy had been teaching the course for a while, she was excited to have Morgan design and teach a mid-semester project in which students had to “think like researchers” to investigate a microbe and present it to the class. During the course, they also collaborated on lectures, discussions, learning outcomes, new exam questions, and observed each other’s teaching. They designed their partnership so that Morgan could achieve her goal of learning how to design projects at the graduate level and Betsy could learn more about her own strengths and how to reimagine the course for the future.
Check out the full module Morgan developed and click below to hear more from Morgan about her experience in the program!
Loukas Lazos & Liang Zhang, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
When Dr. Liang Zhang, a postdoctoral scholar in Information Sciences from China, approached Dr. Loukas Lazos, professor in the College of Engineering, with the idea of co-teaching part of ECE175: Computer Programming for Engineering Applications, he could hardly wait to get back into the classroom. Although Liang had teaching experience in China, he was eager to spend time in the American classroom and put into practice some of the active learning techniques he had learned about in the CIRTL MOOC he’d taken last fall. With Loukas’ guidance, he prepared a module on collaborative coding for Loukas’ large (200+ student) undergraduate course on coding for engineers using Replit, a program he calls “the Google Docs of coding.” They designed their partnership so that Liang could better understand the needs of American students and so Loukas could better understand the course from a cross-disciplinary perspective.
See a sample lesson plan and activity from the module and click on the video below to hear more about Liang's experience in the program.
Learning Portfolios
The CIRTL learning portfolio culminates in the Postdoc Pathways fellowship, containing your revised teaching philosophy, co-teaching materials, and a final reflection on your accomplishments and future faculty aspirations. A CIRTL Steering Committee member will review your portfolio and provide feedback to help with job market preparation. Many fellows consider this compilation one of the most valuable fellowship experiences.
CIRTL Portfolio Examples
The following examples are just to give you an idea of what your experience could look like as a fellow. Keep in mind that each person's experience and prior knowledge is quite different! Use these just as inspiration and to see the kinds of things you might include in your own portfolio.
Breanne's portfolio (2021-2022 fellow) is comprehensive, easy-to-navigate, and includes a variety of teaching examples and visuals. We especially like how she highlights the unique aspects of her partnership, including the new course content she created and results from a Qualtrics survey she did with students after teaching the new assignment.
Shawn's portfolio (2021-2022 fellow) is friendly, approachable, and shows a clear dedication to undergraduate education. It is well-organized and includes an excellent self-reflection with specific examples/anecdotes from the co-teaching. Also note how his samples of work include a nice blurb that puts them into context for readers!
Maria's portfolio (2021-2022 fellow) is very well-organized, easy-to-navigate at a glance, and actively cites scholarship on teaching (James Lang’s Small Teaching) as part of her descriptions to show she is familiar with the literature.