Winning the 2024 Teaching Excellence Award

I've been nominated for the Stearns Center Teaching Excellence Award 5 times. In Fall 2024, which I was fortunate to only have 1 course and we had a new STEM Accelerator Director who was actually doing the job, I opted to go ahead and apply. After being nominated, I had to submit a 5 page narrative for the 1st round. It took 6 weeks to be informed I had been selected to submit a "portfolio" about my teaching excellence.

What followed was a long journey over winter break (damnit!) which yielded a 134 page narrative about my life as an educator. I opted to take an unconventional approach and used a quest theme complete with dragons! Besides 2024 being the year of the dragon and my lunar zodiac animal, this portfolio was a dragon to slay. When I was notified of winning the award in March 2024, my first thought was "thank G-d, I don't have to ever do that again".

The awards ceremony in April 2024 was lovely. Colleagues, students, and family joined me at a special table in the front of Dewberry Hall. I wore a new dress. I did not hide my tattoos. I was wholly myself and felt proud.

For the sake of posterity and because I am ridiculously proud of my cleverness, find below the opening and closing pages of my portfolio.