City University of New York Exchange Program
What is the Stanford-CUNY Exchange?
Beginning in 2013, Stanford University and the City College of New York embarked on an initiative to foster cooperation between humanities departments on the two campuses. In 2017 the program expanded to include a second CUNY campus, Hunter College. This initiative builds a bridge between vibrant institutions on opposite coasts.
The initiative provides exciting research opportunities for City/Hunter undergraduates that will help them develop their scholarly interests and prepare for future graduate training. And it offers teaching opportunities for Stanford humanities graduate students that will broaden their pedagogical training.
On both sides, the partnership aims to enrich the pool of promising scholar–teachers contributing to the next generation of the professoriate. We do this by promoting the development of future scholars while simultaneously broadening the skill set and teaching experience of emerging scholars already training in Stanford humanities departments.
STANFORD-CUNY GRADUATE TEACHING EXCHANGE
Each fall, the Graduate Teaching Exchange (GTE) sends up to six Stanford humanities graduate students to teach a course in a City College humanities department and a Hunter College humanities department. Under the mentorship of CUNY faculty, participants gain valuable experience working with an enormously diverse cohort of motivated CUNY students. Stanford participants will teach a course according to host department needs, ranging from a self-designed elective to a largely self-designed section in an introductory survey course.* Participants can also take advantage of the vibrant intellectual life of the wider New York City scholarly community.
Teaching at CUNY has proved enormously rewarding and beneficial for previous Stanford teaching fellows. The experience markedly broadens the teaching portfolio for most Stanford PhD candidates, and CUNY students are terrifically fun to teach: one GTE participant called it "the most rewarding teaching experience of my career so far."
Stanford GTE instructors will continue to receive stipend and tuition funding under their normal Stanford fellowship packages and will receive a supplementary housing stipend of $6,000 from City and Hunter colleges (in some cases, physical housing will be offered in lieu of the housing stipend). Participants should inquire in advance with their Stanford department whether teaching at City/Hunter will be counted toward a student's teaching obligations under the Stanford fellowship.
Eligibility
PhD students in good standing in a Stanford humanities department who:
- have advanced to candidacy and are making good progress toward the dissertation.
- have some Stanford teaching experience and pedagogical training.
- are eligible for Stanford five-year graduate fellowship support in Fall 2023.
- are in an eligible field: Art History, Classics, English, French, Comparative Literature, History, Philosophy, and Spanish/Iberian and Latin American Cultures.
Application Requirements
- A one-page letter of application describing your interest in the program
- CV
- Contact information for your PhD advisor. They may be asked to provide a brief note about your suitability for the program and progress toward the dissertation.
- A course proposal for an introductory-level course suitable for teaching at CUNY. Please research the websites of the City College/Hunter College departments in which you are interested in teaching and design a course that you think would be suitable for its students. This sample course should showcase your teaching strengths and will be used as part of the application process. The actual course taught in New York will depend on the particular needs of the CUNY department.
Contact Professor Alexander Nemerov (anemerov [at] stanford [dot] edu (anemerov[at]stanford[dot]edu)), the faculty director of the program, with any questions.
Application deadline: Feb. 2, 2024
*Courses will be arranged with specific departments after graduate students have been accepted into the program through a process that matches graduate student interests with the needs of CUNY departments.
STANFORD-CUNY SUMMER RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
This program brings ten outstanding City and Hunter College undergraduate students to the Stanford campus each summer for an intensive research experience. CUNY students experience the distinctive intensity of intellectual life on a residential campus, along with the research environment provided by Stanford faculty, libraries, and other research facilities.
Each student is paired with a faculty mentor who guides the student's specialized research during the eight- week Stanford summer term. In addition, students participate in a weekly seminar on research methods in the humanities led by a Stanford faculty member and in other workshops on preparing for graduate school applications conducted in collaboration with Stanford’s Summer Research Early Identification Program.
Are you a current Stanford graduate student interested in summer mentoring opportunities?
Graduate students support the individual research projects of CUNY participants through residential mentorship and general writing and research advice. Contact Professor Alexander Nemerov (anemerov [at] stanford [dot] edu (anemerov[at]stanford[dot]edu)) for more information.
