You may have seen the recent announcement that nominations for university-wide teaching awards are now being accepted. I had the privilege of attending the awards dinner last year, and I must say that I was impressed with both the outstanding quality of the recipients and the elegance of the event—a clear sign of the value President McRobbie places on these recognitions of excellent teaching.
To many instructors, applying for teaching awards seems a pretty daunting task. And it is, particularly on a campus like IUB that has so many excellent instructors. But with some advanced planning—I am talking about consistently working towards a goal for years—you can make a strong case for your nomination. Here are some tips:
- Be sure to read the guidelines thoroughly: The criteria for the awards and details of the nomination process are pretty specific, and they are often tied to the review criteria provided to the selection committees, so read the guidelines carefully to understand what is being asked for. See https://honorsandawards.iu.edu/teaching/distinguished-teaching-award-dossier.shtml for details about IU awards and processes.
- Demonstrate long-term patterns: Most awards are seen as long-term career recognitions—not necessarily limited to senior faculty members, but at least acknowledging sustained improvement and excellence. So, consider ways of showing growth and consistent contributions over time. Don’t bounce around between a lot of projects or smaller strengths, but rather show a long-term focus on the things that make you a unique and excellent teacher.
- Focus on direct evidence of learning and success: Yes, grades and student evaluations are important, but what direct evidence can you provide of student learning and success? That can range from demonstrating that students met your course learning outcomes, to showing how they excelled beyond your class. Did students gain recognition for projects coming out of your class—publications, presentations, awards? Did your students do exceptionally well on major field tests or certification exams? We don’t all teach classes with these levels of direct evidence, but think of ways to show your exceptional impact on their learning and extended success.
- Think beyond the classroom: How do you help students beyond your classroom—through mentorships, research collaborations, engagement with student organizations? It is often these out-of-class activities that have the most significant life-changing impact on students, so consider how you can cultivate and capture these activities.
- Demonstrate leadership and impact: Helping your own students learn and succeed is both notable and laudable, but make sure you can demonstrate the ways you have had an impact beyond your own classes—leading departmental efforts in curricular design or teaching improvement, developing initiatives that help students succeed across courses in your major, contributing to improvement of disciplinary teaching at a national level, or producing scholarship on teaching and learning.
- Develop allies and partners early: Don’t wait until award application time to get a peer review of your teaching; get them early and often, so colleagues know what you are trying to do and can give you useful advice. And don’t limit peer evaluation or feedback to just classroom observations; any of the aspects of teaching I mention above can be an area worth a colleague’s input. Their letters of support will be better because they will know you more deeply as a teacher.
- Remember that you are telling a story: Your dossier shouldn’t be a flat collection of information, but it should have a coherence that ties all the elements together—along with strong self-reflection—to tell the story of who you are as a teacher, as well as how you got here. All that data is the evidence to support the claims your narrative makes.
I don’t want to sound like winning a teaching award should be the end in itself. Those awards just happen to recognize faculty members who demonstrate the elements of excellent teaching that I outlined above—rich engagement with students, reflection on teaching practice, and sustained commitment to the profession.
If you want help working on these longer-term aspects of your teaching career, let us know in the CITL. We can never promise you a teaching award, but I am fairly certain we can help you establish a career development plan that will advance your teaching and your students’ success.
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