Teaching at Stanford

Welcome to Teaching at Stanford!

The Center for Teaching and Learning is delighted to offer you this newly revised handbook and to further support you in your teaching-related endeavors.Whether you are brand-new to teaching or have many years of experience, we hope this handbook will give you a sense of how teaching at Stanford is especially rewarding and challenging, regardless of your discipline. Necessarily— because scientists, humanists, social scientists, and engineers will be reading this—the advice we offer is general.We urge you to address the specific challenges of teaching in your field by talking to your colleagues, reading about teaching in your subject, reflecting on your own experiences, and watching carefully those who already know how to teach your discipline well.We expect that you will find enough here, however, to get you started with confidence.

We at CTL maintain that, contrary to popular belief, teachers are made, not born.While teaching is certainly an art, it also is a set of skills that can be learned, just as writing or public speaking are abilities that can be developed. This means that accomplished teachers can always improve, and every new teacher has the chance to be great. At the least, this means that by reading about the theories and approaches we discuss in this handbook, you can learn how to do a very good job in the classroom—good enough to give you satisfaction and to give your students an effective learning experience.

In time, you will go beyond this handbook to develop your own teaching style, one that may even challenge some of the advice given here. You will learn how to make the unusual and the spontaneous work for you and your students and you will be able to respond to students instinctively with pedagogical insight and variety. This is the purpose of any introductory handbook—to let you use the experience and advice of others to help you find your own unique approach. In the spirit of collaboration, please accept our best wishes for a productive and fulfilling teaching experience at Stanford!

Michele Marincovich, Ph.D.,
Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and
Director, Center for Teaching and Learning