Nominations Invited for Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize

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Are you aware of a colleague who has recently developed an innovative teaching tool or method? Perhaps you've admired a faculty member's  creative use of technology in the classroom, original approach to facilitating student collaboration, or new strategies for replicating the advantages of a small course in a large lecture hall. Or maybe you're proud of a teaching innovation you've developed yourself. If any of these is the case, consider submitting a nomination for the Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize [2] (TIP). 

Up to five prizes of $5000 will be awarded for projects representing remarkable teaching innovations. This will be the fifth year the Provost has sponsored the TIP prize, which differs from other teaching awards in that it honors specific innovations to improve student learning, rather than an instructor’s overall teaching excellence. The awards also facilitate the dissemination of these innovations so they can be more broadly shared with faculty colleagues.

Recent awards have spread the word across campus about a range of remarkable teaching innovations. For instance:

• The 2012 prize-winning project "Co-Creative, Immersion-Based Design for Global Health" by Assistant Professor Kathleen Sienko of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering engaged undergraduate engineering students in the unique experience of conducting needs assessment in a foreign country and designing medical devices in collaboration with users in resource-limited settings. You can read more about this teaching innovation here [3]. 
   
• Another 2012 winning project is the E2Coach system developed by Physics Professors Timothy McKay, David Gerdes, and August Evrard in introductory physics courses. E2Coach is a software system that delivers personalized feedback and encouragement tailored to a student's particular background and progress in the course. You can read more about this teaching innovation here [4].

While the TIP awards honor instructors, students are the ultimate winners as they benefit in the long term from the fresh approaches to learning that the annual prizes encourage.

For other profiles of recent awardees, click on the TIP tag below. You can learn about even more winners and find information about the nomination and selection process on the TIP page [2] in the Grants & Awards section of our website. Nominations are due at noon on February 4, and the awards will be announced May 6 at the annual, campus-wide technology conference, Enriching Scholarship [5].