Teaching Innovation Awards

Innovation in Teaching Award

The Innovation in Teaching Award (ITA) provides a $2,000 stipend to support faculty-led instructional innovations that enhance student learning. This competitive award recognizes creative, evidence-informed approaches to teaching that improve student engagement, learning outcomes, and overall educational effectiveness.

Download Application for the Innovation in Teaching Award

Eligibility

This competitive award is open to all faculty and staff with continuing appointments and course development responsibilities (i.e., an assignment from the dean, chair, or designee to develop a new course or significantly revise an existing course). Eligible applicants include, but are not limited to, tenured and tenure-track faculty; clinical instructional faculty; lecturers; and graduate student teachers.

Applications from teams of collaborating proposers are encouraged. However, only one stipend will be awarded to the primary applicant named in the application. Proposed activities may not be substantially similar to other submitted or previously funded projects. Faculty who have received an Innovation in Teaching Award within the past five (5) years are not eligible to apply.

Application Details

Applications are handled electronically. All proposals must be submitted as a single PDF document to cetl@uttyler.edu by the application deadline noted below. Please download the Application Form for more details on proposal content and the proposal evaluation rubric.

Application Deadline: Friday, March 20th, 2026 at noon

Award recipients will be announced at the end of the academic year during the 2026 Faculty Awards Banquet.

2025 Innovation in Teaching Award Winners

Dr. Huaxin Song, Nursing

Leveraging AI Collaboration to Enhance Analytical Thinking in Health/Nursing Informatics Education

Dr. Song will be embedding generative AI tools into her graduate Nursing Informatics and Health Informatics courses, with the goal of improving her students analytical thinking and interpretation skills as well as improving students’ understanding f the ethical and practical implications of AI in healthcare.

Dr. Venu Gapalakrishna-Remani, Management

Act. React. Learn: Experiential Learning Through Improv and Role Play

Dr. Venu will be using the improv-based teaching technique, Act. React. Learn. In his business and leadership courses, with the goal of encouraging spontaneous collaboration and idea generation as well as improving students’ public speaking and presentation confidence.

Dr. Jennifer Wooldridge, Criminal Justice

The Death Penalty and Actual Innocence

Dr. Wooldridge will be implementing a project-based learning course design where students will explore the death penalty in the United States through using real world case studies of wrongful convictions, with the goal of helping students critically analyze constitutional issues and ethical concerns relating to capital punishment as well as improving student’s ability to synthesize legal and procedural narratives into public advocacy products.