Individual Teaching Excellence Award
The Augusta University Individual Teaching Excellence Award recognizes an individual faculty member who:
- Is strongly committed to teaching and learning. This commitment may be demonstrated through activities aimed at advancing the quality and practice of teaching and learning or helping students develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills or global and multicultural understanding;
- Uses effective teaching strategies to enhance student learning, including innovative uses of technology, active learning, learning communities, student portfolios and assessment;
- Has a strong commitment to fostering the academic success of students by interacting with them outside the classroom (e.g., advising, mentoring and recruiting).
Program Teaching Excellence Award
The Augusta University Program Teaching Excellence Award recognizes a department or academic program for:
- Individual and collective faculty efforts to improve teaching and student learning;
- Its Methods of assessing student learning, achievements that go beyond student evaluations and use of assessment results that inform teaching practices as well as curriculum development and revision;
- Active support of faculty in the use of innovative and effective forms of andragogy and technology (e.g., critical thinking, collaborative and cooperative learning, problem-based learning and learning communities);
- The use of a reward system that promotes good teaching (e.g., compensation, promotion, tenure, grants, leaves, travel and departmental or program-based awards);
- Policies that encourage collaborative faculty efforts, including team teaching, teaching discussion groups, common assessments, interdisciplinary courses, learning communities and mentoring;
- The use of an on-going, data-driven process to review and reshape curricula;
- Exemplary out-of-class teaching and learning efforts, co-curricular work with students, and efforts in advising, mentoring, recruiting and retaining students;
- Student success based on the department’s or program’s success criteria (e.g., graduation rate, job placement and acceptance in graduate school).
- Clear articulation of how quality is defined, promoted, and assessed by the department or program.
Online Teaching Excellence Award
The Augusta University Online Teaching Excellence Award recognizes an individual faculty member who:
- Is strongly committed to quality online teaching and learning as evidenced by teaching, service and scholarly activities;
- Uses effective and innovative online teaching practices that result in student engagement, student satisfaction and achievement of desired learning outcomes;
- Demonstrates an extraordinary commitment to fostering the academic success of online students by interacting with them beyond the virtual classroom;
- Uses assessments of student learning to inform teaching practices and improve online courses based on an on-going, data-driven process;
- Promotes collaboration among students based on best practices of online student engagement;
- Ensures online courses meet online quality standards set by the USG, such as Quality Matters.
Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Award
The Augusta University Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award recognizes an individual faculty member who:
- Engages in the systematic examination of issues about student learning and instructional conditions that promote learning, building on previous scholarship;
- Documents the use of strategies for investigating and evaluating the impact of teaching on student learning, anchored in the research literature;
- Engages in scholarship that is public, peer-reviewed and critiqued;
- Produces scholarly work that contributes to the body of knowledge on teaching and learning;
- Develops a well-articulated teaching philosophy that drives research questions;
- Documents the dissemination of his or her scholarship results;
- Serves in a formal or informal leadership role to promote and support the scholarship of teaching and learning at Augusta University and beyond.
