TEACH Awards: Recognizing Our Outstanding Educators!

The TEACH Rising Star award recognizes emerging leaders in health professions education whose teaching experience demonstrates ongoing and promising growth in contribution to teaching and increased levels of teaching leadership and responsibility. Recipients of this award have at least one year of teaching experience and are in no more than their fifth year of service as a faculty member. This award is intended to acknowledge faculty members who show extraordinary potential at the beginning of their academic careers.

The TEACH Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award recognizes outstanding achievements in research, scholarly activity, and creative accomplishments that focus on the effectiveness of teaching methods. Recipients will embody the Environment of Inquiry related to teaching by systematically investigating questions associated with learning and the conditions under which it occurs in order to improve outcomes.

Demonstrations of excellence in SoTL include but are not limited to:

• Developing presentations and/or publications of research and creative efforts related to SoTL.
• Securing external grant and/or contract support for SoTL activities.
• Contributing to the local, regional, and/or national impact in SoTL.
• Recognizing learner and peer recognition of research and creative efforts.

This category is eligible for a team award.

The TEACH Educator Mentorship Award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated excellence in counseling and guidance towards another’s teaching practice and/or educational research. Mentorship is a long-term commitment to the education and advancement of learners and/or faculty at VTCSOM and RUC.

Demonstrations of excellence in Educator Mentorship include but are not limited to:

• Providing outstanding availability and guidance for learners and/or faculty as they seek opportunities to advance their teaching skills.
• Giving advice and being available for consultation for learners and/or faculty as they ponder career pathways in education.
• Offering advice and direction in developing and completing education research projects.
• Assisting in identifying opportunities and suggesting additional training for further work in advancement of teaching or education research.
• Exhibiting consistent personal commitment to the mentorship role.
• Displaying honesty and integrity.
• Delivering constructive feedback when needed or sought.

Your nomination of a faculty member for this award should describe how the mentor has been outstanding in supporting, encouraging, and promoting enhanced teaching practices, education research, and other approaches to professional and personal development related to teaching.

This category is eligible for a team award.

The TEACH Faculty Feedback Award recognizes the skill of effectively incorporating feedback into daily routines that focus on specific behaviors, assess performance, guide reflection, promote expertise, and identify a learner’s readiness to change.  Excellence in Feedback involves key principles of “Good Feedback” which include aligning goals, feedback that is well-timed, regulating and limiting feedback to remediable behavior, and maintaining a focus on specific performance, decisions and actions.  Recipients will have provided invaluable and supportive academic feedback, in both content and delivery method, which helps others to develop and excel in their work.  Nominees for this award should utilize feedback as an integral part of the daily partnership between the learner and teacher and deliver both timely and constructive feedback allowing for improvements before the next assessment.

Demonstrations of excellence in Feedback include but are not limited to:

• Emphasizing the importance of feedback in learning.
• Demonstrating a committed and consistent effort to provide feedback for impactful learning.
• Creating novel approaches to providing Feedback.
• Developing feedback that has a local, regional, and/or national impact.

The TEACH Innovative Teaching Award recognizes the use of new teaching strategies or the implementation of existing strategies in new ways to enhance learning. Innovative teaching encompasses teaching students from diverse learning backgrounds, a passion and enthusiasm for meaningful teaching, application of teaching technologies, and creativity in engaging students.

Demonstrations of excellence in Innovative Teaching include but are not limited to:

• Utilizing creative in-class activities.
• Employing the use of educational technologies for traditional, online, or asynchronous teaching.
• Novel assessment techniques.
• Practicing hands-on teaching to include simulation or laboratory experiences.

This category is eligible for a team award.