On June 9, 2022, FACET hosted a celebration the finalists of the fifth annual Innovate Awards on Excellence in Teaching. The category winners were also announced and are designated below.
Finalists for the category of Collaborative Activities
Savannah Hall
- Lecturer of Communication, Professional, & Computer Skills, IU Bloomington
- Who Wrote It Best?’: Bad News Writing Competition helped students determine the appropriate delivery method for bad news that maintains relationships and identifies a path forward. As a team, students craft a message to an audience based on a bad news scenario. The judges create a scorecard and select a winner.
Meghan Porter
- Lecturer of Chemistry, IU Bloomington
- You Be the Teacher! helps students solidify their content understanding and develop applications skills. Groups are given a journal article and series of questions designed to help them critically read the article, determine key findings, and relate results to concepts previously discussed in class. Once they’re ready, each groups presents their questions, answers, and rationale.
Lamia Scherzinger - Winner
- Lecturer of Kinesiology, IUPUI
- Global Exchange in a First-Year Seminar Class facilitates comparative and interdisciplinary learning across cultural contexts, intercultural learning, and global problem solving. Through this project, IUPUI and Newcastle University students connect through synchronous and asynchronous activities, to learn about each other’s lives, culture, government, and policies affect eating and nutrition.
Finalists for Community Engagement
Olga Korne
- Senior Lecturer in Accounting, IU Kokomo
- VITA - Community Service and Experiential Learning allows students to apply tax knowledge in the real world while assisting underserved communities and low-income individuals with free tax preparation and tax filing. Upon earning the required certifications, students work as volunteer tax preparers under the direct supervision of the VITA coordinators at United Way.
Jamie Oslawski-Lopez and Stephanie Medley-Rath
- Jame and Stephanie are Assistant Professors of Sociology, IU Kokomo
- #GetEngaged Assignment encourages students to apply sociological concepts to the real world. Students attend an event to get them more connected to their campus, community, or both. Then they prepare an artifact that includes photographic evidence of their attendance and write a narrative connecting what they are learning in class with the event.
Christina Romero-Ivanova and Paul Cook - Winners
- Christina is an Assistant Professor of Education and Paul Cook is an Associate Professor of English at IU Kokomo
- Crucial Events, Creating Empathy: Storytelling with Tomorrow’s Teachers engages high school students during the second course in the tomorrow’s teachers dual credit program at IU Kokomo. After using a digital storytelling guide and artifacts from their lives as mediators, students created a re-story narrative of a smaller story within the grand, crucial event of their lives.
Finalists for Creative Uses of Online Tools
Sumreen Asim - Winner
- Assistant Professor of Elementary Science and Technology, IU Southeast
- Bringing Augmented Reality to Deepen Learning leverages free online tools to enhance students’ process and thinking skills to improve overall understanding of science content and how immersive technology can help transform pedagogy to help deepen learning of science content.
Jared Allsop
- Clinical Assistant Professor of Health & Wellness Design, IU Bloomington.
- Understanding Implicit Bias engages students in a four-part academic process to better understand their own implicit bias against individuals with disabilities and what they can do to overcome those biases. By using five different online tools, students remain deeply engaged in the material and demonstrate a higher level of understanding.
Mohammad Merhi
- Associate Professor of Decision Sciences, IU South Bend
- Increasing Students’ Engagement, Motivation, and through Online Gaming motivates students to prepare before class by utilizing Kahoot. Students are asked to provide answers and to think critically about the question. For difficult questions, they brainstorm with other students and then discuss it with the whole class.
Finalists for Skills Across the Curriculum
Sara Loy
- Associate Instructor of English, IU Bloomington
- Vampire Art teaches analytical writing by exploring the figure of the vampire. Students find an image of a vampire and label the vampiric characteristics they observe. These characteristics will likely include fangs, but students are required to point out what else shows us that this person is vampiric.
Rebekah Dement and Steffany Maher - Winners
- Rebekah is a Lecturer of English and Steffany is an Assistant Professor of English Education at IU Southeast
- Reading, Writing, and Peopling: Essential Skills for College Success allows incoming and returning students to dust off social skills and practice essential strategies for success. Students weary with remote learning rekindled interpersonal skills by participating in theater games and practicing foundational skills of college-level reading and writing.
Katie Metz
- Senior Lecturer of Accounting, IU Bloomington
- Dear Sir: The Regulations Need to Change allows students to showcase learned skills via a cumulative “create / evaluate” final project. In teams, students take the role of an SEC task force and propose to revise a U.S. GAAP financial reporting standard through a team memo, a team roundtable presentation, an individual email, and an individual video response.
Finalists for DEIJ-Informed Pedagogy
Sara Cochran
- Clinical Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, IU Bloomington
- Women and the Entrepreneurial Challenge allows students to apply the learnings from the course to develop a plan for success in their entrepreneurial career. Students explored their specific interests through a book club assignment where they selected a book related to class topics and presented it to the class, as well as through a research paper further exploring a specific topic of interest.
Kelly Blewett
- Assistant Professor of English, IU East
- Arguing Style: Considering Students' Rights to Their Own Language that allows students to articulate a position regarding style and language rights. Students read and discussed the readings via a low-stakes discussion board titled “Coming to Terms with the SRTOL.”
Donna Albrecht - Winner
- Associate Professor of Education, IU Southeast
- Using I Am from Poem Creation to Inform DEI Practices and Build Community allows students to explore their identities and to share the human experience. Students examine I Am From poems for patterns and imagery, then brainstorm memories from their home, childhood, relatives, foods, and more. They share descriptive powerful words using a Gallery walk or Flip-Grid.
