When inviting faculty to join the program’s CITE planning team, consider sharing some key information that can help set clear expectations. For example…

• What is the overall objective of the CITE planning team?
• When does the CITE planning intend to achieve its work?
• What kind of time commitment should they expect during this period?
• Is there compensation attached to participation?
• When and how often are meetings?
• What is the nature of work and deliverables that will happen outside of meetings?

All of this information will likely emerge during the course of a conversation with colleagues, but it may also be helpful to provide information up front where possible.

While many may believe “team work makes the dream work,” not all teams are immediately “well-oiled machines.”

Recognizing that CUNY faculty have full plates and participate in many different initiatives, establishing roles and expectations at the start of any college’s CITE voyage is critical for success and healthy working relationships.

At York College, this meant forming several teams:

1. A team of two leaders who covered administrative responsibilities while fielding communication with CUNY CITE Central so that the rest of the faculty did not have to worry about stipends, ordering materials, coordinating CITE responsibilities for the college, etc.;
2. A leadership team of more faculty that met approximately twice a month to ensure the larger college was on track with CITE efforts while having opportunity to shape CITE activities, learning goals, etc.; and
3. The full CITE team, including adjunct faculty, that met once a month during important decision-making moments around CITE vision, learning goals, etc.

At this college, the two leaders would meet every week to coordinate CITE efforts, taking the burden off of the rest of the team to shape meeting agendas and facilitate activities that could bring the group closer to their CITE objectives (e.g., defining student learning goals and reviewing course scope and sequence alignment with those goals). Then, during leadership and full team meetings, other faculty could shape their college’s CITE direction by weighing-in on key decisions and ideas but leaving the nitty-gritty detail work to the two CITE leaders. For example, one team member described their roles and learning goal creation process as follows:

[Our two leaders], they kind of direct us: ‘Okay, we’re gonna do this artifact review or syllabus review.’ They kind of commandeered that. And I needed that because there’s just so much going on…They were great to kind of keep me personally grounded in what I was focusing on, because I feel like there’s a lot of things going on in this whole initiative…So it was good to kinda keep us on track, and also, I think, align what [CITE Central] needed from us too….
[When creating Learning Goals, team leads] kind of took everybody’s ideas…[such as] what’s important to them…And then we’re like, ‘alright, these 2 can go together, and then these 2 can go together.’ And then we started putting them in what order should they be in, you know, and then we had them down. I think we had like 5 or 6 [goals]…And so we started giving our input that way.
I think [one team lead] is usually our note taker, just because … she works the best on the computer and then I’ll be back up. So then I’ll kind of like, you know, fix any spelling errors or anything in there while she is going, so she doesn’t have to worry about that. She can just get stuff down on the paper while people are talking and then so she’s like moving stuff back and forth…and then she’s like, ‘What if we do this? How does this sound, you know?’ And she always comes up with the perfect wording to get something in there to express exactly what somebody was trying to say. And we’re like, that’s exactly it. That’s what I wanted to say, you know, and then cause she just has the experience of writing so much, so she just has that ability…And so, like everybody has their own role, and how we’re doing this and so it’s just we just work so well as a team. It’s just it’s great. You know. Everybody has their little role in how we put these things together.