Teaching Fellowship

Mentored Teaching Fellow appointments are highly selective, reserved for doctoral students who have demonstrated that they are ready for the responsibility of teaching a course on their own. To be considered, students must have passed their qualifying exams and shown outstanding performance as Teaching Assistants. Applicants should have a faculty mentor who is committed to actively supporting them during their Mentored Teaching Fellowship year.

Mentored Teaching Fellows will be appointed in the spring semester. Typically, selected students will spend the following fall completing preparatory training through the CET’s Future Faculty Teaching Institute and meeting regularly with their departmental mentor to plan their course while working as a departmental TA/RA or taking a semester of fellowship. (Students who have completed the Future Faculty Teaching Institute prior to being appointed a Mentored Teaching Fellow may follow a different timeline.) In the spring, the fellow will teach their course, during which time they are paid as Assistant Lecturers with compensation and benefits in accordance with the terms of employment set forth in the Collective Bargaining Agreement governing Graduate Student Workers at USC. During the teaching semester, they will participate in two CET-facilitated “Community of Practice” fellows meetings and meet regularly with their departmental mentor. Participation in these events will be considered part of the Mentored Teaching Fellow’s workload and should be managed accordingly. If a fellow’s proposed course doesn’t reach minimum undergraduate enrollment (8 students), the course will not be able to run and the fellow will need to arrange for alternate financial support in the spring (e.g., by using a semester of fellowship). Students who successfully complete the requirements of the Mentored Teaching Fellows program receive a certificate of completion, are listed on CET’s website as a Mentored Teaching Fellow and may list the fellowship on their CV as evidence of teaching development and experience. 

The Mentored Teaching Fellows program is intended to be part of students’ educational and professional development. The program requires significant investment from the fellow’s academic department, including fall preparation meetings with a designated faculty mentor and regular mentoring meetings for supervision and discipline-specific teaching guidance in the spring. The faculty mentor must write a letter indicating their support for the nominated student and their willingness to complete the required mentoring, to be submitted by the Chair to the Dean for Undergraduate Education in accordance with the application timeline and process outlined below. 

Departments must also identify a suitable course for the fellow to teach. The course must be an undergraduate, seminar-size course with a maximum enrollment of 30 students. It should not be a GE course or have attached TAs. Interested departments should include the course in their department’s scheduling and staffing (S&S) plan that is due the first Friday of January, which will allow the Dean’s office to have an accurate count of the department’s course offerings. Chairs/DUSes from interested departments should speak in their spring S&S meeting about the proposed course. Approved courses will be listed for the following spring with the graduate student provisionally identified as instructor. Please note as stated above that fellows’ courses will, when offered, need to make the enrollment of a minimum 8 students to run. 

Fall Semester 

Departments should circulate information about the program as desired to departmental students, identify qualified/interested students, secure verbal support and commitment from appropriate faculty mentors, and identify suitable course needs.  

Spring Semester 

Chairs / DUSes should bring the above information to their Spring S&S meetings.  

If during S&S the proposed course is supported as part of the departmental curriculum for next year, the student has an identified mentor, and the course meets the requirements above, then the department will be asked to obtain a formal letter from the departmental mentor endorsing the candidate.  The department chair should then send the letter along with a brief description of the course and confirmation of the S&S discussion to College Undergraduate Education Dean Emily Anderson (ehanders@usc.edu).  These materials should be shared with Dean Anderson within two weeks of the departmental S&S.  

If S&S has approved the course, the student has an identified mentor and letter of support, and the course meets the requirements above, then Dean Anderson will approve and share this information with Ingrid Steiner at CET, who will confirm the fellow’s appointment for the following year.  The Chair will be CCed on all such communications. Note that Fellows are appointed similarly to ALs, so no departmental vote of approval is needed.