This award, offered in 2018-2019 for the first time, provides Georgia Tech with the opportunity to acknowledge the value of scholarship of teaching and learning articulated by Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered (1990), and exemplified by the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This award is intended to encourage and support the work of faculty whose scholarship focuses on the instructional mission of the institution.  One award of $3,000 will be made annually (pending funding availability and quality of nominations).

This award replicates the USG’s Board of Regents’ Teaching and Learning (SOTL) Award, which recognizes individuals (not teams).  The campus winner will be Georgia Tech’s nominee for the Regents’ award in the upcoming year.

Questions? Contact Carol Subiño Sullivan.

Timeline

• Packets are due by Friday, February 7, 2025 at 11:59pm.
• Award recipients will be honored at a campus celebration, date and format to be determined by the institute committee.
• Names and nomination packets of the award winners will be posted on the CTL Faculty Award website.
• Names of winners will be added to the Teaching Awards wall located in the Clough Undergraduate Commons.

Eligibility Criteria

Current full-time faculty members of any rank are eligible for nomination. 

Nomination Materials

The nomination packet is limited to 20 pages, including any appendices (1” margins, minimum 12-point font for each section below). Incorporating every kind of evidence will be impossible. Instead, each nominee will want to select only the strongest and most relevant evidence. Each packet must include the following information:

• A Table of Contents for the portfolio. NOTE: The TOC does not count toward the maximum of 20 pages.
• A nomination letter.
• A teaching philosophy narrative that outlines how their research questions and the related goals, theories, and methods of their scholarship activities support their teaching philosophy (1-2 pages).
• Data/evidence of the impact of their teaching techniques/pedagogies on student learning and its potential impact on teaching and learning in the discipline (3-5 pages).
• A condensed curriculum vitae that includes relevant SOTL presentations, articles and/or publications (2-3 pages).
• One or two letters of support from colleagues qualified to comment on the value and quality of the nominee’s scholarship of teaching and learning activities, and its impact in improving undergraduate/graduate education. These letters should describe how the nominee’s activities have contributed knowledge in the field and how it has enhanced the learning of students.

All documents must be combined into a SINGLE pdf file and uploaded to Georgia Tech’s awards portal: https://gatech.infoready4.com.

Packets that exceed 20 pages or do not meet the formatting requirement will not be accepted. 

Review Process and Selection Criteria

The Center for Teaching and Learning establishes a committee consisting of previous Georgia Tech educational award winners to review the nomination packets and select the winner of this award. Each nominee's submission is reviewed in the context of departmental and institutional standards. Evaluation/endorsement of the nominee's exemplary performance is provided by the nomination letter and by colleagues qualified to comment on the nominee's scholarship.

The award committee will look for persuasive evidence that nominee has:

• Engaged in the systematic examination of issues about student learning and instructional conditions which promote the learning, building on previous scholarship.
• Documented the use of strategies for investigating and evaluating the impact of teaching practice on student learning, anchored in the research institute.
• Engaged in scholarship that is public, peer reviewed, and critiqued.
• Produced scholarly work which contributes new questions and knowledge about teaching and learning.
• Developed a well-articulated teaching philosophy that drives research questions.
• Documented the dissemination of their scholarship results.
• Served in a formal or informal leadership role to promote and support SOTL on their campus or beyond.

Winners 2024

Colin Harrison, Biological Sciences (nomination packet)

Harrison’s scholarship on equity in academia focuses on minimizing student challenges in the classroom and providing ways for students to be resilient when faced with challenges outside of the classroom. He studies how supportive structures, such as positively framed instructor talk, Scientist Spotlights reflections, and course-based undergraduate research experiences, allow students to feel like they belong in academic spaces. Dr. Harrison explains, “By focusing our efforts on teaching in this manner, we can make science a more welcoming place for all.” His colleagues endorse the positive impact his publications have had on the field.

Past Winners

2023
Todd Fernandez, Lecturer, Biomedical Engineering (Nomination Packet)

In his own work Todd develops, tests, and mentors about classroom strategies that elicit and develop engineering students’ critical thinking. His most recent individual SOTL project redesigned homework in his statistics course requiring students to correct their own mistakes and reflect on their understanding. He also works on several large-scale curricular change projects to increase the use evidence-based teaching practices in engineering classrooms, especially those that support inclusion and develop students’ entrepreneurial mindset.

2022
Emily Weigel - Biological Sciences (Nomination Packet)
Dr. Emily Weigel’s students tackle real world problems in biological sciences by engaging in scientific research happening in the city of Atlanta. Weigel uses group projects and in-class activities to help students improve their collaborative skills. Weigel herself collaborates with organizations like EPA and West Atlanta Watershed Alliance to design field labs for her course that contribute to these institutions’ own ongoing research. In these projects, students collect and analyze biological and chemical data at different sites in the city. Weigel turns teaching into scholarship by regularly collecting data on student performance and metacognition. She uses this data to adjust her pedagogical approaches to better support student learning. Associate Chair of Undergraduate Affairs Dr. Chrissy Spencer says, “Dr. Weigel is immensely creative in her approach to teaching, student learning, and documentation of student learning.”

2021

Michael J. Evans and Carrie G. Shepler, Chemistry and Biochemistry (Nomination Packet)
Dr. Mike Evans and Dr. Carrie Shepler are creative, dedicated, energetic, and talented educators who, according to colleagues, are helping to shape the future of online chemistry lab education. Both actively engaged in innovation in the chemistry classroom, Drs. Evans and Shepler also use the research strategies of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) to develop, test, and iterate pedagogical approaches that improve student learning and that can be shared with the larger chemistry education community. They share a belief that the most effective learning happens in inclusive learning communities that support trying, failing, and trying again as a means of both learning chemistry and learning about their own learning. School of Chemistry and Biochemistry chair, M.G. Finn, particularly commends Drs. Evans and Shepler on their collaboration with a graduate teaching assistant to creatively respond to moving labs online at the onset of the COVID pandemic, which “made an extraordinary difference…enabling us to retain and even enhance much of our laboratory curriculum,” which included a SoTL study of the changes and eventual publication in the Journal of Chemical Education. 

2020
Raghu Pucha, Senior Lecturer, School of Mechanical Engineering (Nomination Packet)
Dr. Raghu Pucha has been highly commended by students and faculty alike for his creative and consistently evolving teaching practices. He was one of the few faculty chosen to participate in the Center for Teaching and Learning’s Inaugural Class of 1969 Teaching Scholars Program and implemented peer-assisted learning strategies by inviting his previous students to interact with his current students on selected topics. Dr. Pucha has employed many other innovative pedagogies and conducts a great amount of research on how the different strategies impact student performance. Regent’s professor Dr. Suresh K. Sitaraman states, “Dr. Pucha’s teaching approach with research-based best teaching practices, grounded in proven pedagogical theories, is providing a perfect platform for our undergrad students to become lifelong learners in understanding the real-world design challenges and the impact of their professional practice.”

2019

Ashok Goel, Professor, Interactive Computing (Nomination Packet)

Dr. Ashok Goel is a leader in innovation, especially in his use of artificial intelligence to teach about artificial intelligence. In 2016, he and his research laboratory created a virtual teaching assistant named Jill Watson to automatically respond to frequently asked questions in the Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence course. Dr. Goel collected early evaluations of the course and used the results to improve the technology.  He’s shared his research in over a dozen publications and has been featured by major media outlets. Recently Dr. Goel received the Outstanding Al Educator Award from the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence for “his sustained excellence in teaching.”