Teaching Award Nominee’s Letter

Below are the instructions that the nominee will receive if they are nominated for a teaching category:

The prize for this award is $2000 (less the standard deductions for income tax and social security). Please note that if you’ve won a teaching award in the last five years, you’re not eligible to apply at this time. You also must be in a full-time teaching position to be eligible. If you are nominated for more than one award, you may apply for only one award.

To apply, submit your one-page statement and supporting evidence, as outlined below, by 11:59 p.m. on January 26, 2025. Please submit all the documents as one pdf with a file name in the following format: Category_Year_LastName (e.g., InnovationInTeaching-Grad_2025_Diaz). The file can be electronic documents combined into one pdf or a scan of a hardcopy packet.

Submit your application PDF.

Application Submission Guidelines:

Create a title page with your name, department/school/college, and the award category for which you are applying (including whether undergraduate or graduate).

Statement: In one page, describe how your teaching is exemplary in the category for which you have been nominated. The following questions are meant to provide a starting place if you would like one, but they are not meant to limit the content of your statement.

  1. Foundational Course Excellence: How do you identify and help students to build the foundational knowledge and skills that they need to succeed in subsequent courses? How do you create a classroom environment that helps motivate students to learn?
  2. Outstanding Teaching in the Major: What kind(s) of disciplinary expertise and ways of thinking do you help students develop in your course(s)? How should they grow intellectually, professionally, and personally during the time they have with you? What methods or strategies do you use to help them develop in the ways you value?
  3. Outstanding Graduate Advising: How do you help students to become experts in the discipline during the time they have with you? What methods do you use to make your graduate courses effective? How do you help prepare students for, and help them to pursue, opportunities in their field? How do you mentor or advise them, including by supporting their success in writing and defending theses, dissertations, and/or other high-stakes graduate work (performances, internships, publications, etc.)?
  4. Community Engaged Teaching: How did you build mutually beneficial community partnerships through which students could engage in meaningful learning experiences? How did students develop through their work to benefit the community? How did you design the experience so that students could accomplish course learning goals through their work outside the classroom?
  5. Inclusive Teaching and Mentoring: What does it mean to you to practice inclusivity? How do you approach this practice intentionally in your teaching and/or mentoring? What impact have you seen on your students (and yourself)?
  6. Innovation in Teaching: How have you worked on improving your course over time to enhance student learning? How do you plan to keep improving/enhancing your course to help students thrive/learn?
  7. Excellence in Online Teaching: How have you prepared to teach online? What innovations in technology or course design specific to an online environment have you engaged in? How do you make connections with your online students?

Evidence: Create a packet of the following materials to support your statement. The entire evidence packet should be as concise as possible.

  1. The latest syllabus for one applicable course.
  2. A one-page description of your goals for student learning in that course, and an explanation of how you gather evidence of students' learning throughout the course.
    1. The learning goals can relate to knowledge, skills, students' personal or professional growth, etc. (Please don’t copy and paste the objectives from the syllabus.)
    2. The explanation of how you gather evidence can include both formal and informal methods that you use to observe, assess, or attempt to measure students’ learning and development.
  3. A one-page description of three activities, assignments, projects, or other learning experiences for students and an explanation of how each one supports your goals for student learning in the course where you use it. At least one of these three example activities must be from the course for which you provided a syllabus. After the description and explanation, please attach the relevant materials that students receive (e.g., assignment sheets, class activity handouts, fieldwork descriptions, experiment instructions, etc.).
  4. An explanation of how you have used feedback from students to adjust, enhance, or improve your course. This may be feedback they gave you directly, or feedback you gleaned from observing their performance and/or evaluating their work. After the explanation, you may attach your student evaluations (optional—see 4a and 4b below), and/or any other student feedback you would like to share (e.g., mid-semester feedback, survey results, students’ work, etc.)
    1. If you choose to include student evaluations, please limit it to no more than two semesters within the past three years. (So, for example, it would be fine to include evaluations from Fall 2022 and Fall 2021.) Include only the summary report, not copies of evaluation forms.
    2. If you choose to include student comments, please submit the full set of comments from the original report rather than a selection of comments.

Optional:

  1. Provide up to three testimonials/letters of recommendation from colleagues or community partners.
  2. Include a one-page explanation and, where possible, provide evidence of collaboration or wider influence. Are you helping others to enhance their teaching? Are you collaborating with colleagues to revise a course or otherwise improve learning experiences for students? Do you do classroom research or present at education conferences in your field?