Georgia Tech Faculty Award for Academic Outreach
The Georgia Tech mission statement includes:
Our mission is clear: "to provide the state of Georgia with the scientific and technological base, innovation, and workforce it needs to shape a prosperous and sustainable future and quality of life for its citizens." It is achieved through educational excellence, innovative research, and outreach in selected areas of endeavor…..
Georgia Tech values its position as a leading public research university in the United States and understands full well its responsibility to advance society toward a proper, fair, and sustainable future. By seeking to develop beneficial partnerships within public and private sectors in education, research, and technology, Georgia Tech ensures relevance in all that it does and assures that the benefits of its discoveries are widely disseminated and used in society.
This award provides Georgia Tech with the opportunity to reward faculty members for productive academic outreach in which they go beyond their normal duties to enrich the larger educational community with their subject matter knowledge. We anticipate granting one or two awards annually depending on the number and quality of nominations. However, no more than one faculty member from any given academic unit will be chosen in the same year. The award amount is $2500; if two awards are given, this sum will be evenly split between the two winners.
Timeline:
- Nomination packets are due by 5:00 p.m. on the first Monday of February.
- Awards will be presented at the Faculty/Staff Honors Day Luncheon in April.
- Award winners will also be honored at the New Faculty Orientation Dinner in August.
Eligibility Criteria:
- Candidates must be full-time tenure-track or tenured faculty members.
- Self-nominations are permitted.
Nomination Process:
- The nomination packet (no more than 12 pages) should be submitted electronically as a MS Word or Adobe PDF file to the Provost’s office at the following email address: donna.llewellyn@cetl.gatech.edu.
- The nomination packet should include the following items:
- Letter of nomination or self-nomination
- Table of contents for the packet
- Description, written by the candidate, of the excellence and impact of the outreach activities. (no more than 4 pages)
- Letters of support from:
- the candidate’s department head or chair (if this person is the nominator, the nomination letter will suffice for this requirement).
- two or three letters from those who have observed the candidate’s outreach activity. These letters need to show why the author feels the projects are meritorious. The writer should be a stakeholder in K-12 education (teacher, parent, administrator, member of state or county education agency, etc.).
Selection Criteria:
This award is for faculty who reach out to establish beneficial partnerships within public and private sectors in education, especially K-12. The point is to use the faculty member’s academic expertise to further the learning of K-12 students, teachers or other educational stakeholders of Georgia.
The criteria which follow give a basis for the committee’s recommendation of the selection committee. These are well aligned with the National Science Foundation’s “second criterion.” Not all of the items below need to be addressed. Does the project:
- include educational innovations, especially in K-12 venues?
- show how well the activity advances discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training, and learning?
- show what the benefits of the proposed activity may be to society in general or locally?
- have significant impact on students' or teachers’ lives, both in and beyond the classroom?
- include efforts that produce long term (multi-year) benefits to K-12?
- reach beyond the GT classroom and laboratory?
- show a variety of different activities and venues?
- have activities which are inclusive (that is, with multiple groups of be students)?
- demonstrate clear evidence that the outreach has goals are clearly defined and is productive?
The Academic Outreach and Educational Partnership awards will have the same timeline and there may be movement of applications between the two pools depending on which competition is more appropriate for the application.
Questions:
Contact Dr. Donna Llewellyn at donna.llewellyn@cetl.gatech.edu.
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Criteria for the CETL/BP Junior Teaching Excellence Award
This award is open to any nominated full time tenure-track faculty member (including all BME faculty with joint Emory appointments) who does not yet have tenure. Self-nominations are permitted. Candidates should have completed at least three semesters of teaching at Georgia Tech, and at least one academic year on the tenure-track at Georgia Tech. First time nominations are preferred. We anticipate granting between one and three awards depending on the number and quality of nominations. However, no more than one faculty member from any academic unit will be chosen.
Please note that for funding reasons, we need to know which of our candidates have had an impact on engineering undergraduate students.
The packet should include the following items:
- Letter of nomination
- Table of contents for the packet
- Letters of support from the following individuals:
- The candidate's department head or chair. If this person is the
nominator, then the nomination letter will suffice for this
requirement.
- One or two other colleagues, at least one of whom has observed the candidate
in the classroom.
- Three to five students, at least one of whom must be a current student, and at
least two of whom should be undergraduate students (if the candidate's
program teaches undergraduates)
- Illustrations of the candidate's teaching excellence and impact on student
learning
- If it is applicable, evidence of impact on engineering undergraduate students (this can be included in the other elements). This will help determine the source of funding for the awards.
Please limit the packets to no more than 15 pages.
Packets should be copied single sided and should be stapled in the top
left corner (or clipped if you prefer). Please do not bind
the packets or put them into binders - that makes distributing them to
our committee more difficult.
In the past, the committees that have judged the candidates for this
award have stressed the following characteristics. While there is
no guarantee that future committees will look at the packets in the same
way, these are some of the basic properties and activities that are
considered:
- Educational innovations
- Connections between research and teaching
- Educational outreach beyond the classroom and laboratory
- Teaching excellence in core classes, required classes, and large classes
- Accessibility to all students, even those who were not performing well in the class
- Impact on students' lives, beyond the classroom
- Passion about teaching and learning
- Good Georgia Tech citizenship
Who: A partnership of Georgia Tech faculty, student(s), and K-12 teacher(s) – with at least one member of each constituency.
Amount: $7500: $2500 to be divided equally among the members of each of the three constituencies.
When: Nomination packets are due to Donna Llewellyn in CETL by 5pm on the first Monday of February each year. Awards will be announced and presented at Faculty Honors Day.
Judges: The STEP Advisory Board will form the basis of the judging group augmented by past winners; from which five judges will be chosen. Any members of this group who have a nomination packet in will not be allowed to be judges
Criteria: The judges will be looking for evidence that the partnership satisfies certain conditions including
- Mutual benefit for all constituencies
- Impact of the partnership
- Contribution to the partnership from all involved parties
- Sustainability of the partnership
Restrictions:
- Every partnership must have at least one GT full time faculty member (this includes tenure-track/tenured, research, and general faculty status individuals); at least one full time GT student (this may be an undergraduate or graduate student, and this student may have already graduated at the time of the nomination), and at least one full time Georgia K-12 teacher
- A given partnership can only win the award once – at least one member of the partnership and/or the actual project covered by the partnership must change in order to apply in future years
- A given partnership can only apply for the award at most two times
Nomination Packets should be submitted electronically to Donna Llewellyn at donna.llewellyn@cetl.gatech.edu as a MS Word or Adobe PDF file (this is new this year – we rather not accept hard copies – please contact Donna if this causes a real problem):
- A cover sheet stating the members of each partnership with the three constituencies clearly indicated; signed by all members of the partnership (please sign and scan the sheet or deliver a hard copy of just this cover sheet to Donna’s office in Tech Tower Suite 4 by the due date)
- A statement consisting of no more than 3 pages describing the partnership. This should indicate how this team and project clearly satisfy the criteria listed above.
- A one page statement from each of the three constituencies stating what they have given to and what they have gained from the partnership
- Letters of support: For the K-12 teacher(s) - a letter from the principal(s) of the school(s) where the teacher(s) is/are employed; For the faculty member(s) - a letter from the school chair(s) or unit head(s) where the faculty member(s) works at Tech; For the student(s) - a letter from the advisor(s) (research advisor for doctorate students, academic advisor for all others – it is okay if this advisor is one of the faculty members in the team)
- Up to 10 pages of supplementary evidence and information.
NOTE: This award does not have to be given each year if there are no winners according to the judges.
