News and Events Faculty Students Instructional Technology Course Surveys(CIOS) Courses Resources Thank A Teacher About Us

225 North Ave.
Tech Tower, Suite 004-005
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0383
phone: 404.894.4474
fax: 404.894.4475
email: cetlhelp@gatech.edu

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.