New programs celebrate teaching excellence

Three new initiatives designed to reward and recognize teaching innovations and excellence will go into effect later this semester.

The new initiatives will include the Chancellor’s Award for Departmental Excellence in Teaching. The three-year initial program will announce its first winners in May. Two departments, schools or programs, one large and one small, each will receive $50,000 to be used as the unit sees fit, “perhaps to advance existing learning initiatives or create new ones,” says Robert Skloot, the associate vice chancellor who worked with Chancellor David Ward to create the new programs.

To win an award, an academic unit must demonstrate how its faculty and staff worked together to further a culture of learning, Skloot says. “A unit might show how its curricular efforts have strengthened interdisciplinary teaching across campus, mentored assistant professors on the road to tenure, assisted graduate students making the transition to professional careers or integrated new technologies in education,” he says.

In addition to the new award, six new grants for collaborative teaching also will be given this spring. Recipients will be senior faculty interested in re-invigorating their teaching through working with colleagues in other disciplines.

Skloot says the grants differ from the current Faculty Development Awards in that only senior faculty who work in clusters to design new courses and enhance the campuswide interdisciplinary curriculum will be eligible for the new program, Skloot says.

Also in the offing are new Summer Teaching Workshops/Retreats. Designed by the UW–Madison Teaching Academy and Creating a Collaborative Learning Environment, the program would set aside $50,000 per year for three years to develop an intensive summer curriculum for faculty and staff to learn together how they might become more effective teachers. The first session is set for summer 2000.

“We’re very excited about these initiatives,” Skloot says. “They illustrate how vitally important teaching is to the university and how, at the highest level and with ample resources, Wisconsin will continue to lead in creating an innovative teaching and learning environment, and in rewarding teachers who do this important work, ” he says.

Gift funds will support the three new initiatives for their first years.

For more information: Robert Skloot, associate vice chancellor, 262-5246; skloot@bascom.wisc.edu or Katherine Sanders, Creating a Collaborative Learning Environment, 263-4257; kjsander@facstaff.wisc.edu.