PITF fellows receive a $5,000 stipend (paid in two installments: one in July, and one in May the following year) to use at their discretion. Fellows receive the support of teaching consultants, assessment specialists, and learning engineers to develop and implement their project. Fellows also receive training in a variety of inclusive teaching methods (e.g. Transparency in Learning and Teaching, Universal Design for Learning). 

PITF Fellows get access to our Eberly Student Partner program where they will be paired with a CMU student to receive feedback through direct observations of their teaching. This opportunity helps build relationships with CMU students and understand the inclusive needs of our population better. 

Throughout the projects, fellows create or obtain many sorts of documentations of their teaching (e.g. student feedback reports, assignments, rubrics, reflections, etc.). Participants get a special opportunity to discuss teaching with instructors from various colleges and create a community of teachers interested in inclusive teaching at CMU. Throughout the year, several events also bring together past and current PITF fellows to increase networking opportunities for inclusive teaching at CMU.

PITF fellows are expected to attend learning community meetings that will meet monthly for the duration of the fellowship. These meetings are facilitated by the Eberly Center. This learning community gives fellows a chance to talk to other PITF fellows and to discuss different inclusive teaching strategies. 

The fellowship starts with a week of half-day workshops, 9am-12pm May 5-9, 2025, which will serve as an introduction to inclusive teaching strategies and to build community with the cohort of fellows. Afterwards, the learning community  will meet one hour every month from June 2025 to May 2026. 

In addition to monthly meetings, fellows are expected to meet regularly with their Eberly Center consultant team. The summer often has relatively frequent meetings with your team, depending on the project, up to once a week. These meetings will begin with discussing the course as a whole and then later will focus on the specifics of implementing your PITF project intervention and assessing its impacts on the student experience and/or learning according to your pedagogical goals.

As part of your individual consultation meetings, you will collaboratively design assessments of your PITF project, with Eberly Center support, to find out whether (and how) your project was successful at being more inclusive for students. The type and goal of this assessment are up to you and your team to decide!

As part of the assessment of your project and course, the Eberly Center will facilitate an Early Course Feedback focus group with your students, to provide you with formative feedback to inform potential mid-course adjustments. 

PITF Fellows will also have an opportunity to have Eberly student partners observe class sessions and provide feedback on the implementation of inclusive teaching techniques in your classroom. Your Eberly Center colleagues will help you get the most out of student feedback in addition to the other outcomes assessments appropriate to your project goals.

• CMU faculty members of any rank, discipline, employment track, and teaching experience are eligible. The faculty must have a continuing teaching appointment at CMU, and must teach the targeted course during the academic year 2025-2026.
• The course can be undergraduate or graduate level, occurring at the Pittsburgh, Qatar, Africa, or Silicon Valley campuses of CMU.

• To see the diversity of topics and approaches from past PITF fellows, look through the past PITF projects.

• Download the PITF Proposal Template. Answer each question by typing directly on your copy of the template.
• Submit your application, including a completed template, on this Google Form:  (email submissions will not be accepted to facilitate de-identified reviews) 
• Do not include identifiers (your name or email) in the template or in any field of the Google form beyond name and Andrew ID.

• Your proposal for the PITF program should be detailed enough that we have an idea of what your project would entail, but it doesn't have to include all the details. Your proposal is not a contract that we will hold you to. It’s a description that gives us an idea of your inclusive goals and how you intend to achieve those goals. Eberly Center consultants help awardees finalize the scope and nature of their project designs and assessment plans.
• We are looking for fellows that have a project idea that is both manageable in the time frame, seems likely to increase inclusivity and belonging in your class, and that we can help support.
• The PITF Proposal Template includes suggestions for answering each question, often indicating what we’re looking for.

Assessment is any way to find out how effective some change was. This can take many forms, including assignments and activities that you’re already using in your course. Additional assessments may be a survey on student attitudes and beliefs, comparing student work across semesters, getting student feedback, or directly tracking student behaviors. As these examples suggest, the focus is primarily on how your course impacts students, since the PITF program aims at increasing inclusivity and belongingness for students. At least one member of your assigned Eberly Center consultant team will be an expert at assessment and will help you craft quantitative and/or qualitative assessments of things that matter most to you and your students. What you assess is largely determined by your project, but some ideas include measuring any change in students’ sense of belonging across the semester, asking students what parts of the course are helping them succeed best, and comparing exam scores across semesters to see whether under-supported students are being better served by the course changes you’ve made.

Monthly meetings are typically an hour long, on Zoom. Individual consultations are often about an hour and can occur as frequently as weekly or as infrequently as monthly. The summer will likely involve more frequent meetings with your consultant team, especially if you are teaching a Fall class. Depending on the project, you will have to make changes to your course that may take significant effort and time. Your consultant team will help you scope your project so that it is a manageable set of tasks that aligns with your vision and timeline.

Yes. Doing an Early Course Feedback is a required part of the PITF program. An Eberly consultant will come to your class midway through the semester (or mini) and run a series of focus group activities to elicit feedback from your students about the course. You can then use this feedback to shape the remainder of your course, aligned to your goals. It’s also a great way to see how your PITF changes are being received by students.

Ideally, every fellow attends every monthly meeting. However, just like with a course, we understand that life can get in the way. Additionally, while we try to accommodate the most fellows for our monthly meetings, we know that the schedules of faculty do not align easily. Our hope is that every PITF fellow plans to attend and finds flexibility in their schedule to do so. Exit interviews with PITF alumni have consistently shown that both the monthly cohort meetings and the individual consults contribute equally to the PITF experience and inclusive teaching growth. 

The times of these meetings are between 9am and 4pm Pittsburgh time. If you are in a different time zone (e.g. in Doha or Kigali), we recognize that this may not be convenient for you. While we make every effort to include all campuses in the PITF program, we expect there will be monthly meetings outside of normal office hours. We hope you’ll find the flexibility to attend nevertheless.

Unfortunately, we only fund new projects. Our fellowship structure involves regular individual meetings with a team of consultants to support the implementation of your project - this usually involves helping you focus on specific options for implementation. If you’ve already implemented your project, our help is no longer needed. The PITF can support continuing and developing projects of inclusive teaching, especially those that would benefit from Eberly support both at the pedagogical and the assessment level.

Faculty working at CMU-Q, CMU-Africa, or CMU Silicon Valley are eligible to apply for our PITF program. Please note that the monthly meetings with the cohort might be held before or after work hours since they are scheduled during Pittsburgh work hours. We try to accommodate everyone but cannot guarantee that meetings will take place during work hours.