Diggs Scholar Award
2012 Call for Nominations
The Diggs Teaching Scholar Association invites nominations for the 2012 Diggs Teaching Scholars Award. Established in 1992, the Diggs Teaching Scholar Award is unique. It recognizes excellent teachers, highlights innovative teaching practices, and helps teachers share those innovative pedagogies with the larger University community.
Three Diggs Teaching Scholars are selected annually and agree to do the following:
- Help lead the Diggs Teaching Roundtable, a public discussion in the fall semester devoted to pedagogical and curricular issues at Virginia Tech.
- Present their proposed Teaching Enhancement project to share their innovative teaching strategies with others.
- Participate actively in the Diggs Teaching Scholar Association by working on its projects to strengthen teaching at the University and by sharing in the leadership of the Association.
- The award is open to Virginia Tech faculty at all instructional levels (i.e., named and full professors, associate and assistant professors, adjunct faculty, instructors, and graduate teaching assistants).
- Nominees should stand out for their contributions as excellent teachers whose innovative pedagogical strategies enhance the quality of teaching and instruction in their departments and the larger community of teachers here at Virginia Tech.
- Letter of Nomination (no more than two pages) from a department or program chair. The letter should provide a description of the nominee's qualifications, a brief description of the nominee's teaching duties, abilities, and performance, identify the unique talents of the nominee, and identify the nominee's impact on teaching at Virginia Tech. The nomination may also include comments from colleagues or students, descriptions of unusual accomplishments or assignments, and other teaching awards or recognition received.
- Teaching Enhancement project proposal (one to two pages) from the nominee examining an issue, or idea relevant to education, pedagogy, learning, and/or curriculum development that the nominee would like to pursue or share during the following year.
Example projects from previous years include: Teaching with a Stutter (Anthony Kwame Harrison, 2011 Diggs Scholar, Sociology) and Experiences With an Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Design Project for Pervasive Computing (Tom L. Martin, 2011 Diggs Scholar, Electrical and Computer Engineering). - Program budget outlining expenditures to support the Teaching Enhancement project or dissemination (e.g. program advertisement flyers, student support, refreshments). Faculty can use up to $500 (at their discretion) to fund a variety of needs related to their Teaching Enhancement project.
- Monday, January 30, 2012 - deadline for receipt of nominations
- Monday, February 6, 2012 - finalists are notified and invited for an interview with the Diggs Association
- Mid-Late February, 2012 - winners are announced
- Late August, 2012 - winners recognized at University Award Ceremony
Eligibility Requirements
Application
The nomination packet consists of the following:
No other documentation will be considered beyond the department's letter of nomination, the nominee's project proposal, and a proposed program budget. Submission of a dossier is expressly discouraged.
Materials should be sent in PDF format no later than January 30, 2012, to Gena Chandler (gechandl@vt.edu).