Regularly scheduled help sessions for such large, introductory science courses as biology, chemistry and physics ... free tutoring ... free workshops on how to improve study skills ... a van service for students with physical disabilities ... high-tech apparatus for the blind and deaf ... special accommodations for students with learning disabilities while taking exams ... expert help on how to be a better teacher for teaching assistants, instructors and faculty members.

These are but a few of the services that Cornell's Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) offers to improve student learning and instructor teaching. Here is a look at its major components.

Learning Strategies Center (LSC)

The LSC provides free classes, tutorials, workshops and individual consultations to help students develop effective learning strategies. The LSC offers support to some students even before orientation through its annual Prefreshman Summer Program. The program serves about 175 incoming students each summer to ensure that they have a strong foundation upon which to build their college careers.

"When freshman year began I took advantage of all the supplemental courses and tutoring for general biology and general chemistry," says Roxanna Garcia '06, an animal science major, who had been in the Prefreshman Summer Program the summer before her first semester. "They were excellent reviews ... and I have used those services for all my science and math courses, including chemistry, organic chemistry, calculus, physics and biology." Garcia became an organic chemistry tutor herself in her junior year, tutoring now about six hours a week.

The LSC, which makes about 7,000 tutorial contacts each year, not only provides semester-long supplemental classes and tutorials to clarify lectures and offers tips for learning the material and review in preparing for exams in more than a dozen of the large, introductory-level science, economics and math courses but also gives workshops and posts online help on topics from time management and concept mapping to tips on answering essay and short-answer exam questions.

Chiaka Abara '06, a biology major who plans to go to medical school next year, has attended about 10 different LSC supplemental courses in math and science and took periodic advantage of the free tutoring until she became a tutor herself last year. "I did not know of the great challenges and the great rewards that I would receive through tutoring. It requires a lot of patience, flexibility and a certain degree of creativity," she says. "But there is nothing better than a student walking in the office confused and discouraged and walking out more knowledgeable and confident with the material."

Student Disability Services

This program ensures that qualified students with disabilities can participate on campus on an equal basis with other students. Some students need extra time on exams or other special accommodations because of such cognitive or psychological disabilities as dyslexia and attention deficit disorder or because of physical disabilities, broken limbs, food allergies or such illnesses as mononucleosis. Since the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, schools must make whatever "reasonable accommodations" are needed to create a level playing field for students with any kind of disability. That may include computer assistive technology (e.g., Braille translation and printing, voice recognition software, document scanning), strobe lights, alarms and bed shakers in residences, sign language and oral interpreters, note takers or rides across campus for students who have trouble walking. Currently, SDS has about 950 students receiving some sort of service, including three blind students and more than 40 others who are visually impaired as well as a handful of deaf students.

Take history major Cristina Hartmann '07. Born deaf due to Usher syndrome, which also creates balance problems and compromised peripheral and night vision, Hartmann has the benefit of SDS interpreters who accompany her to classes to translate lectures into American Sign Language and to take notes on a laptop that communicates with Hartmann's laptop.

"In all of my years in the educational system, I can safely say that Cornell provides one of the most comprehensive disability services programs that I've ever experienced," says Hartmann, who noted that none of the other universities she visited before matriculating at Cornell would have provided both C-Print and a sign language interpreter simultaneously.

"If students have been accepted, they have what it takes. We provide the support to help them to succeed at Cornell," says Helene Selco, director of the CLT.

Development programs for instructors and faculty

The International Teaching Assistant Development Program helps international teaching assistants improve their communication and teaching skills; the Cornell Teaching Assistant Development Program offers workshops and individual support to improve the teaching skills of teaching assistants; and Faculty Instructional Support helps faculty members become more-effective teachers. Because international teaching assistants have special needs, CLT offers specialized workshops and courses to help them improve their fluency in English and communication skills and to better understand cross-cultural classroom dynamics, develop effective rhetorical strategies through videotaped sessions, role-play, evaluation, review and linguistic guidance. For international and English-speaking teaching assistants alike, units include training in planning, organizing, presenting information, developing interactive, student-led teaching strategies and managing a classroom; issues of control, power and authority in the college classroom; better understanding of issues of diversity; motivating and evaluating students; facilitating discussion and improving listening skills.

For the past 25 years, David Way, director of instructional support, has been showing teaching assistants as well as faculty members ways "to step away from center stage and learn to adopt a collaborative style of working with students," he explains. "I also commonly help them align their assessment schemas with clearly articulated and specified learning outcomes so that students are motivated more by a clear sense of what they gain from succeeding in the assessment task than merely by what grade they achieve."

Ashim Datta, professor of biological and environmental engineering, who started at Cornell in 1987 as an assistant professor, has worked with Way for the past 15 years.

"We've looked at his course design, various drafts of course syllabi he was working on, and specific teaching plans for critical classes in his courses," recalls Way, who periodically attends Datta's classes, sometimes videotaping them to review with Datta. He has helped Datta learn how to warm students up in the first five minutes of class, "instead of just jumping into lecture straight off," shown him how to integrate active engagement with the class around critical points periodically to reinforce their learning instead of straight lecture the whole period, and how to tie things together in the last 10 minutes of class to reinforce a take-home message, "instead of running the clock down and ending with 'Are there any questions?'

"These have led to extended review discussions between us that helped him fine-tune new approaches he was experimenting with. I have rarely met a teacher who was more determined to continuously improve and positively impact his students."

Those efforts paid off last fall when Datta won a 2005 Excellence in Teaching Award from the College of Engineering.