Teaching Innovation Award
As part of Spring Convocation, the Office of the Provost asks for nominations for the Teaching Innovation Award. The award is designed to honor faculty who have incorporated outstanding innovative teaching practices into their classes at Montana State University.
Learn more and nominate an individual
2024
The recipient of the Teaching and Innovation Award is Beth Shirley, assistant professor of technical communication in the Department of English in the College of Letters and Science. Through her study in the field of technical communications, Shirley focuses on community engagement with science, seeking to pair traditional and scientific knowledge to improve communication between communities. Shirley’s time in the classroom is spent on technical and science communication. In one of her classes, students create and publish an annual magazine called Bitterroot, which centers on Montana’s lands and people. She’s also an active member of the Montana Agritourism Fellowship Program, which seeks to increase the amount of visitor engagement with Montana’s food systems.
Click here to see all past recipients
The selection committee evaluates nominees on the following criteria:
- Evidence of innovative and/or novel teaching practices that have been incorporated within the past three years.
- Relative comprehensiveness of scope. The innovation must have involved changes in the way a subject is taught. For example, an activity that transpires in the course of one class period does not have the same influence as a pedagogical strategy that evolves over several class periods or an entire course.
- Measurable impact on teaching effectiveness, student success and/or retention.
- Potential or realized widespread use within or across disciplines.
Innovative practices will be expected to be grounded in best practices of the college and university teaching profession and/or the particular discipline.
Eligibility:
To be eligible, individuals must be current tenure track or non-tenure track faculty who have completed a minimum of three years of teaching at MSU-Bozeman. Not eligible are current members of the selection committee and previous winners of the award.
Click here for more information
Past Recipients
2023
The recipient of the 2023 Teaching Innovation Award is Myleen Leary, an associate professor in the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship.
Leary teaches courses in management research, which she has worked to overhaul in recent years to include data analytics and novel software. She has created new course materials and according to colleagues, her modernization of those courses has had positive ripple effects throughout the business college and on the wider MSU campus. Learn more about Hannah Leary's award.
2022 Stephanie Wettstein, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Learn more about Stephanie Wettstein's award.
2021 Hannah DelCurto-Wyffels, College of Agriculture’s Department of Animal and Range Sciences,Learn more about Hannah DelCurto-Wyffels' award.
2020 MacDonald Burgess, Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, Learn more about MacDonald's work and all of the awardees
2019 Megan Wickstrom, Mathematical Sciences Learn more about Megan's work and all of the awardees
2018 Graham Austin, marketing, Meta Newhouse, graphic design, and Mary Stein, sustainable
food and
bioenergy systems
2017 Mike Babcock, Psychology
2016 Brent Rosso, Jake Jabs College of Business & Entrepreneurship