Teaching Excellence & Innovation Awards
This award acknowledges and celebrates teaching excellence and innovation at UBC’s Okanagan campus. The successful award recipient(s) will be exemplary role models who have and will continue to have a significant impact on the culture of teaching and learning on the Okanagan campus, and beyond.
Award Criteria
Candidates will have demonstrated excellence in two of three categories, all of which also demonstrate an intentional commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity and anti-racism.
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Educational leadership involves leading significant transformation in teaching and learning at an institutional, disciplinary, community, and/or societal level. Educational leadership fosters and supports change, and leads to a more inclusive, equitable, and diverse post-secondary education landscape.
TEACHING EXCELLENCE
Teaching excellence refers to the intentional actions of an instructor to create an exceptional learning environment through engaging in pedagogical practices designed to maximize student learning. Excellent teachers engage in inclusive practices, scholarly teaching and ongoing reflection on their teaching practice.
EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION
Educational innovation is the novel execution of ideas that contribute to more effective teaching and learning practices. The result of educational innovation impacts people in academia and beyond to reach mutual goals.
Awards Terms
| Nominations close: Intent to Nominate Form due to nominee’s Dean’s Office | November 10 |
| Dean advises nominees of their nomination | November 25 |
| Nominee (and Nominator) submit relevant documents to the nominee’s Dean | January 5 |
| Dean’s office submits compiled nomination packages to Office of the Provost | January 12 |
| Presentation of awards at Awards Reception | May |
| Recognition of award recipients at Convocation | June |
Awards consist of a cash prize of $2,000.00 each. In any one year, however, the adjudication committee may advise the Provost that fewer awards be given. A faculty member may win the award once only during the course of their career.
A master plaque listing the names of award recipients will be displayed in a prominent place on campus. The recipients will be recognized at the annual Teaching Awards Ceremony as well as honoured formally at Convocation.
Beginning in 2021/22, there are two nomination categories.
- Up to two awards are available for any faculty member with a continuing appointment, either tenured or tenure-track.
- One award is available for instructors holding full-time or part-time limited-term appointments.
Faculty members, deans, department heads or directors, field supervisors, alumni and students will be invited to submit nominations. Faculty members may not apply for the award on their own behalf, although they may provide documentation in their own words as to why they feel they are deserving of the award.
Unsuccessful nominations will be carried forward to the following year’s competition (one year only). Nominees will have the opportunity to update their nomination package to reflect their latest teaching endeavours towards meeting the criteria for the award.
The adjudication criteria for the Award for Teaching Excellence and Innovation are based upon a comprehensive, robust view of teaching that includes in‐class instruction but also takes into account those activities that support teaching that occur outside of the classroom.
For more details about the award criteria, please refer to the Award Rubric.
The Teaching Award Adjudication Committee will be selected by the Okanagan Provost and Vice-President, Academic or their designate, who will further select the members of the committee at their sole discretion. The committee may include past award recipients.
The nomination package must be submitted as one combined PDF document. Please refer to the key dates for the process deadlines.
Nominators must complete and submit the Intent to Nominate Form to the Dean of the nominee’s Faculty by November 10, 2023.
Following confirmation from the Dean’s office, nominators must complete and submit the following supporting documents to the Dean of the nominee’s Faculty by January 5, 2024:
- Nomination form
- Letter of nomination
- Selected letters of reference from students and/or colleagues.
- Up to 5 letters of support may be included.
- At a minimum, one letter must be from a student and one letter must be from a UBC peer.
- A letter of support from the nominee’s department head or director (not needed if the department head or director is the nominator)
The nominee will complete and submit the following supporting documents to their Dean by January 5, 2024:
- Teaching philosophy (max. 2 pages)
- Personal statement explaining how the criteria is met with specific examples (max. 3 pages)
- The nominee’s CV in UBC format edited to explain teaching excellence (no more than 15 pages)
- Overview of Student Experience of Instruction data (SEOTs, SEoIs, TEQs) highlighting excellence over time (max. 2 pages).
- Nominations exceeding the number of pages suggested in the above sections will not be considered.
- Nomination packages must be submitted as one PDF document.
- The entire nomination package must be submitted electronically to the Provost office at ubco.provost@ubc.ca
- Please note the Intent to Nominate form does not need to be included.
- Hard copies are not required and will not be considered.
- Nomination packages that are late, incomplete, or do not conform to the guidelines above will not be reviewed by the adjudication committee.