5 Reasons Why Two Professors are Better Than One

What happens when professors from two different disciplines, like computer science and English, come together to teach the same class? Bentley students will find out this academic year when the university launches team-taught course options.  

The model — in which two or more instructors from different disciplines collaborate to design, teach and grade a single course — opens the door to tackle tough issues through multiple lenses. Plus, there are clear benefits for both students and professors. 

“Team teaching is an innovative teaching strategy, different from the more traditional divide-and-conquer approach where two professors teach alternate class sessions,” says Liz Paushter,  executive director of the Badavas Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at Bentley. “Instead, faculty pairs are in full collaboration mode, integrating different frameworks or perspectives into a curriculum that they develop together. They share classroom presence at every session and continue collaborating through final grading—students experience a true partnership.” 

The new Bentley courses include experiential projects. “Part of the approach is to ask how students learn best,” says David Szymanski, associate provost for academic innovation and professor of Natural and Applied Sciences. “Faculty are creating hands-on opportunities to work with external partners, for example, so students are not just gaining new knowledge in these complex ways, but they’re taking action on it.” 

5 Reasons Team Teaching is Good for Students 

Bentley’s team-teaching model is intentionally pairing faculty from business and arts and sciences departments to help students see how two people with different expertise work together to solve problems. More specifically, they experience how faculty bridge diverse approaches and apply durable skills to reach solutions. 

Paushter and Szymanski point to several benefits students gain from seeing different perspectives come together in real time, including these five takeaways: 

1. Strengthening problem-solving skills 

Students learn how to think more critically and creatively to spark new ways of tackling complex problems. 

2. Building teamwork and collaboration skills 

Working across disciplines helps students develop teambuilding and communication skills in diverse groups. 

3. Seeing new points of view 

Discussions across fields and industries allow students to build on their understanding of and appreciation for diverse viewpoints. 

4. Making class more engaging 

Discussions across multiple disciplines deepen engagement, leading to an improved ability to integrate knowledge. 

5. Developing lifelong skills  

Students gain a better sense of how to manage their own thinking and learning, including strategies for self-regulation and reflective thinking. 

A Look at the Professors and Courses Making it Happen 

Bentley’s first team-taught course, Latinx Leadership: A Sociocultural Exploration, launched this fall. Assistant Professor of Management Mateo Cruz and Assistant Professor of English and Media Studies Jim Miranda designed the class to help students gain understanding of Latinx culture and the social variables that influence identity formation and leadership dynamics.  

“By placing a systemic sociocultural lens on Latinx business leaders, the course gives students opportunities to effectively advocate for change,” Cruz explains. 

“Better understanding how society and culture inform Latinx leadership can help students grow their own leadership skills, regardless of their social identity,” Miranda adds.  

In 2027, three additional team-taught courses will be offered: 

AI for Creators: Data, Narrative and New Media 

Mark Frydenberg (Computer Information Systems) and Liz LeDoux (English and Media Studies) 

The course is designed to help students learn to navigate the latest AI tools while thinking critically about their impact and communicating insights across platforms. 

Who Can You Trust? Legal and Literary Perspectives 

Maria Granik (Law) and Luke Mueller (English and Media Studies) 

In this course, students will analyze narratives and legal texts to help identify and explain features of trust and its value for relationship-building, including the role of laws and social conventions. 

Global Nonmarket Strategies 

Rodrigo DeMello (Management) and Zhizhen Lu (Global Studies) 

This course explores the need for global businesses to develop nonmarket strategies to navigate political, societal and other external influences that affect business performance — including a firm’s ability to manage political risk, maintain supply-chain resilience and operate in foreign markets. 

Lessons and Support for Faculty Success 

Students aren’t the only ones who benefit from team teaching; instructors do too. Research shows that team teaching across subjects exposes instructors to new content and new perspectives on their own expertise. It can also build personal connections among instructors and mentorship opportunities, lessening isolation in teaching and building connections across disciplinary silos. 

“Higher education has an isolation problem for faculty, particularly where silos are created, especially at universities with different colleges,” Szymanski says. “Bentley has always been uniquely set up for faculty collaboration across departments because we don’t have separate schools. But our new team-teaching model takes it a step further with intentional opportunities to create a sense of community among faculty so they feel more deeply connected. Whenever you build something with someone else, you feel a sense of belonging.” 

Bentley’s faculty communities are spearheaded by the Badavas Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. The center advances effective teaching and forward-looking course design by working alongside faculty and staff to explore, experiment and share ideas and evidence-based practices.  

“The structures we have put in place to support and partner with faculty are crucial, because what we see in higher ed institutions is that innovative initiatives fail when the systems have not been built first,” Paushter says. “The Badavas Center is positioned to reach across the university, across disciplines, across divisions.” 

Investing in team-taught courses advances Bentley’s Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative to foster innovative, hands-on learning and interdisciplinary collaboration. In addition to the 2026-2027 pilots, Bentley is experimenting with other team-teaching designs. One — a hands-on, experiential learning section of the course, Solving Business Problems with Information Technology (CS100) — was launched this fall with corporate partner Boston Dynamics. A second, planned for spring 2027, is an experiential capstone course for the Artificial Intelligence for Innovation major. 

“Our team-teaching model is a culture shift in how we think about classroom spaces, and from a learning perspective, it’s extremely energizing on many levels,” Szymanski says. “The experiential learning component, for example, allows students to learn by doing. But faculty are also learning because they’re able to see what’s possible to create with their team-teaching partner. Making that process visible to students is powerful.”