The Regents have allocated $1 million per annum for five years, beginning FY 2009, for these teaching awards to be available to faculty at UT Austin. The awards will involve one-time payments to individual faculty. It is intended that no fewer than 30 total awards will be made each year.
Lecturers Fatima Fakhreddine and Cynthia LaBrake each received teaching awards for non-tenure track faculty. These awards carry with them $15,000 each. Assistant Professor Dionicio R. Siegel also received a Regents Teaching Award for tenure-track faculty and his award carries with it $25,000. Finally, Professor Eric Anslyn received a $30,000 teaching award for tenured faculty.
In November 2008, the Board of Regents introduced the Regents’ Outstanding Teachers Awards for the nine academic institutions. The awards are a symbol of the importance they place on the provision of undergraduate teaching and learning of the highest order, in recognition of those who serve our students in an exemplary manner and as an incentive for others who aspire to such service. These teaching awards will complement existing ways in which faculty excellence is recognized and incentivized.
The process of selecting candidates will be a rigorous campus-based process, relying heavily on student and peer faculty evaluations within academic departments and progress through various stages of evaluation up through the university, resulting in a recommendation from the campus president. No more than 76 candidates may be recommended per year.
Award nominees must have clearly demonstrated their commitment to teaching, and a sustained capability to deliver excellence to the undergraduate learning experience, through all of the following principal criteria:
- Sustained high performance in student end-of-course evaluations for more than one undergraduate degree course, at any undergraduate level; evidence to include high evaluation scores and trends, absence of grade inflation patterns, and positive written comments.
- Peer review evaluation of curriculum quality, classroom expertise, and demonstrated focus on learning outcomes and assessment of those outcomes.
- Demonstrated ability to link faculty scholarship with innovative course development, content, and intellectual challenges that together will inspire students’ curiosity and creativity, and promote student engagement in the learning process.
