For new faculty, the first weeks at Duke bring a great deal to learn: new colleagues, new students, new systems, new expectations. Following this year’s New Faculty Orientation, hosted by the Office for Faculty Advancement, the Duke Center for Teaching and Learning welcomed new faculty members to the New Faculty Teaching Academy: Building Your Teaching Practice, led by CTL Faculty Director Bridgette Hard.
Hard, a Professor of the Practice in Psychology and Neuroscience and the inaugural faculty director of the CTL, brought nearly 20 years of college teaching experience to the session. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from eight students to 400, while also conducting research focused on teaching and learning. But her message to participants was not that effective teaching depends on a particular personality or performance style. Rather, she emphasized that it is a valued, learnable skill set—one developed through evidence-based practice, experimentation, reflection, and support from colleagues.
The Academy began with a deceptively simple prompt: Think about the best teacher you ever had. What made their teaching effective?
As participants shared their memories and identified common qualities among the teachers who had made a lasting impression, they began to build a shared understanding of what effective teaching can look like. For newer instructors, the session offered practical strategies and a framework for making teaching feel more manageable. For those with more experience, it offered an opportunity to step back, put language to practices developed over time, and consider how those practices might evolve in a new institutional context.
A central part of the Academy introduced the Duke Teaching Effectiveness Framework (part of the 2030 Teaching and Mentoring Excellence Committee Report), developed by a committee of faculty representing Duke’s many schools. The framework centers on three foundational principles:
- Teaching is more effective when courses are intentionally designed.
- Students learn best when they are part of an engaged, trusting learning community.
- Excellent teachers are developed through reflection and support.
Together, these principles offer a practical way to make purposeful decisions about teaching. Participants explored how beginning with what students should be able to do by the end of a course can guide choices about assessments, class activities, and the use of instructional time. They also considered the conditions that help students learn at their best: active participation, clarity about expectations, mutual respect, and a sense that their instructor is invested in their success.
The final portion of the Academy focused on sustainable first-year teaching practices, including using course-design principles to prioritize time and energy, focusing on relationships with students, creating sustainable systems, and building connections with colleagues who can help new faculty navigate Duke’s tools and processes.
Hard closed with a reminder that resonated throughout the day: “Teaching is not a performance. It’s a collection of learnable skills related to course design and developing relationships. The teachers who made a positive impact on us were rarely effective because they were trying to impress their students. They cared about learning, built meaningful relationships, and kept getting better over time.”
The CTL is proud to support Duke’s newest faculty members as they begin that work, and looks forward to partnering with them throughout their teaching journeys.
The CTL is grateful to the following senior faculty for joining a portion of the Academy to share their experiences and perspectives with the new faculty:
- RIchard Katskee, School of Law
- David Schanzer, Sanford School of Public Policy
- Len White, School of Medicine and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences (Neuroscience)
- Jerry Reiter, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences (Statistics)