Griffith Earns Robert N. Stern Award

The Robert N. Stern Award for Teaching and Mentoring was established 14 years ago by ILR’s Teaching Advisory Committee to honor faculty members who are excellent teachers and also devote large amounts of time to mentoring students. Associate Professor Kati Griffith was honored with the 2019 edition of the award at the ILR School’s 26th McPherson Honors and Awards Dinner, held this spring on the Cornell campus.

Griffith is an associate professor of labor and employment Law and chair of the Labor Relations, Law, & History Department. She is also an associate member of the Cornell Law School faculty. She teaches courses on labor and employment law, immigration law and legal issues affecting low-wage workforces.

Griffith joined Cornell’s ILR faculty in 2007 and since then she says that she has striven “to create an interactive learning environment, while building students’ analytical, oral communication, writing and research skills.” She uses a “semi-Socratic” teaching method, in which she often answers students’ questions with a question to help them arrive at the answers on their own.

As a mentor, student nominators described Griffith as incredibly accessible and always willing to provide honest and open advice. An honors thesis student under her direction said that Griffith “has been a voice of calm during times of stress and has served a crucial role in developing my argument and improving my writing.” 

The Stern Award is another in a long list of accolades for Griffith, as she is two-time recipient of the Cornell ILR MacIntyre Awards for Exemplary Teaching, and has twice been selected for the Most Influential Faculty Member honor by Merrill Presidential Scholars. In 2018, Griffith was named a Stephen H. Weiss Junior Fellow, Cornell's highest teaching award for Associate Professors.