New and Early Career Instructor Teaching Community

The New and Early Career Instructor (NECI) teaching community aims to foster and accelerate success in teaching for eligible new and early career instructors in a one-year community. Participants will learn, discuss, and document evidence-based teaching practices, create and form connections with instructors in different areas, and enjoy a space for reflection, iterative growth, and professional development.

The program is open to instructors who:

  • Are in their first three years of teaching at the University of Rochester
  • Are on a multi-year contract (e.g., tenure track, instructional track, clinical track, lecturer, two-year visiting assistant professor, etc.)
  • Teach courses that enroll students at the University of Rochester

 

The goals of the community are to help early career instructors:

  • Adopt evidence-based teaching practices
  • Identify appropriate Teaching Center programming to support their teaching
  • Develop a network of colleagues with whom they feel comfortable discussing teaching
  • Define the parts of a teaching effectiveness framework and establish a definition of effective teaching as defined by their department/program, school, UR and their academic discipline
  • Identify their personal teaching goals and areas of overlap and divergence with the definition of effective teaching defined by the audiences above
  • Reflect on their own teaching as the basis for iterative improvement
  • Document their teaching development for tenure, promotion or job applications
  • Develop skills to support their evaluation of the teaching of others

This program is structured to take place over the course of one academic year, with six in-person sessions in both the fall and spring semesters. The time commitment is approximately 12-14 hours per semester, inclusive of meeting time.

The Teaching Center will determine meeting times each semester based upon participants’ schedules.

Register online to participate in the New and Early Career Instructor teaching community for academic year 2025-26.

Please email the Teaching Center for more information.

Additional Support

In addition to the NECI teaching community, the Teaching Center offers a variety of programming, including workshops, consultations, cohorts, mid-semester observations, grants, and more. If you are not eligible for this community, please join us in our other programming.