Teaching Opportunities

Teaching

The policies governing teaching by postdocs is available at https://postdocs.yale.edu/policies/teaching. The information below describes the administrative processes involved in hiring a postdoc to teach.

Postdoctoral fellows and associates who find opportunities to teach at Yale must contact Postdoctoral Affairs prior to accepting the teaching opportunity.  Depending on the postdoc’s title, funding source, and visa, some postdocs may be unable to accept teaching positions. 

In general, postdocs may encounter one of three teaching opportunities:

  1. Teaching Fellow. A Teaching Fellow (TF) is the equivalent of a graduate student teaching assistant in a course.
  2. Lecturer. A lecturer position is a non-ladder faculty position that enables one to serve as the instructor of record for a course.
  3. Summer Session. Please see below for more details.

Teaching Fellows

The department in which the course is being taught must complete the steps below before a postdoc will be approved as a Teaching Fellow and before the teaching assignment may be entered into the Teaching Fellow System (TFS):

  1. Obtain written approval from the Postdoc’s faculty mentor. 
  2. Obtain written approval from the Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) if the postdoc is on a visa.
  3. Obtain approval from the funding agency if the postdoc is a postdoctoral fellow.

All approvals should be forwarded to postdoc.affairs@yale.edu prior to the start of the semester. Once all approvals have been received, Postdoctoral Affairs will initiate the following steps:

  1. We will instruct the registrar of the department hosting the course to enter the assignment into TFS.  
  2. We will ask the Teaching Fellow office for the COA and compensation level for the teaching assignment. By submitting this information, the teaching department is signaling to the Graduate School that the department has exhausted all avenues for finding a graduate student to serve as a TF.  The department is also agreeing to provide a COA to cover fringe cost for hiring a postdoc to serve as a TF.
  3. We will calculate the change in the postdoc’s compensation and send instructions to the postdoc’s home department to enter the change into Workday.

Lecturers

The following steps are necessary before the postdoc will be approved to teach:

  1. Obtain written approval from the Postdoc’s faculty mentor. 
  2. Obtain written approval from the Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) if the postdoc is on a visa.
  3. Obtain approval from the funding agency if the postdoc is a postdoctoral fellow.

All approvals should be forwarded to postdoc.affairs@yale.edu prior to the start of the semester. Once all approvals have been received, Postdoctoral Affairs will initiate the following steps:

  1. We will notify the Office of Faculty Administrative Services (OFAS) that the lecturer position is approved. 
  2. We will request the COA from the teaching department.
  3. We will calculate the change in the postdoc’s compensation and send instructions to the postdoc’s home department to enter the change into Workday.
Note that postdocs whose duties include lecturing as part of their training program, as outlined in the initial hire letter, are not required to complete the approval processes noted above.  
 

Yale Summer Session

Departments whose postdocs wish to teach in the Yale Summer Session (YSS) should work with YSS directly to determine if the YSS position can be held concurrently with a postdoc position or if some reduction in effort in the postdoc is necessary and acceptable.  The YSS program prefers to hire postdocs whose academic appointment will have ended prior to the start of the summer so that the teaching will not conflict with academic appointments or effort reporting.

Note: postdocs receiving funding from non-Yale sources are rarely eligible for a YSS teaching position.