Three professors in College of Health Professions receive Teaching Excellence Awards
For the first time since 2015, not one but three professors from the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow College of Health Professions will be honored with Teaching Excellence Awards.
Each year, the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) honors five faculty members with Teaching Excellence Awards to encourage professors to be creative and innovative when teaching students.
The 2017-18 winners are:
• Cheryl Geisthardt, Human Environmental Studies
• Steven Gorsich, Biology
• Karen Grossnickle, Physical Therapy Program
• Roop Jayaraman, School of Health Sciences
• Tom Kozal, School of Health Sciences, recipient of 2018 Lorrie Ryan Memorial Award
Kozal was the recipient of two teaching awards: the Teaching Excellence Award and the Lorrie Ryan Memorial Award. The Ryan Award is given to one professor each year who succeeds in building a sense of community within a learning environment and being a mentor for students.
The last professor from CHP to win that award was Rene Shingles in 2014.
All three professors were surprised with the news during class.
“I had just started going over the study guide with my HSC 106 students and they came rushing in with balloons, Oreos and letters for both of the awards, and announced right there, in front of my entire class of 350 students,” Kozal said. “At first, I was upset, thinking someone interrupted my class, but then I saw my colleagues and the balloons and realized something good was happening.”
Jayaraman teaches large classes, some with 150 students, so he had to come up with creative ways to stay connected with his students and make sure they are learning everything they need.
With his undergraduate students, he requires them to set up study groups. He designates a leader for each group, who reports to him so he can hear straight from students how they are handling the curriculum. With his graduate students, he teaches through what he calls “guided discovery.” Instead of lecturing, he forces his students to learn from each other and hold each other accountable for mistakes.
“That’s what graduate school is. When you’re working in a lab, nobody is going to come in and set you straight,” Jayaraman said. “Students need to gain the confidence to correct each other in a respectful, non-threatening way.”
Grossnickle tries to make sure students are open to learning and growing. She calls her strategy “teaching to the why.” When a student answers a question, she asks follow-up questions to figure out how they got that answer.
“There’s usually more than one answer and more than one way to get there,” Grossnickle said.
She also wants to make sure they aren’t simply memorizing, but know the reasoning behind the material.
“Sometimes students will give me the right answer, but they have no idea how they got there,” Grossnickle said. “I can’t get in the students’ heads to know what they’re thinking. I ask these questions not because they’re wrong, but because I want to know how they’re learning.”
CHP Dean Thomas Masterson said having three professors win teaching awards is a victory for the college.
“We have an incredible array of instructors,” Masterson said. “I always tell people our DNA is high-quality instruction. We expect that out of our people, and they deliver.”
A 15-person committee is put together by the CETL to accept nominations and choose winners. The committee includes 10 faculty members, one from each college and four at large, and five students elected by the Academic Senate.
Nominees are required to answer questions about their teaching philosophy in writing and choose colleagues and students to write recommendations. All answers are collected through SurveyMonkey.
Committee members read the teaching philosophy and recommendations and score them. All answers are collected anonymously, so committee members do not know who they are scoring. Student Opinion Survey scores are also taken into account.
“We take extensive measures to make sure that throughout the evaluation process, all reference and recommendation materials submitted for evaluation are reviewed anonymously,” said Antoinette Tucker, executive secretary for the CETL.
The committee has a policy which states no more than two faculty members from the same department can win the award in one year.
Winners will be recognized during CETL’s Faculty Excellence Exhibition March 22. They will also be recognized during Spring Commencement.
