Accolades: Building Bridges, Advancing Inclusive Excellence, Improving Student Engagement

They say good things come in threes, and the Center for Teaching Excellence can certainly attest to that. Our team received a trio of good news this summer, learning that we are recipients of a Hoos Building Bridges Award, an Inclusive Excellence Award, and a President and Provost’s Fund for Institutionally Related Research Award. We are grateful for these recognitions and excited about the possibilities for advancing our work. Learn more about each award below.

Hoos Building Bridges Award

This is an excerpt from a story originally published by UVA Today.

Some recipients of the University of Virginia’s Hoos Building Bridges Awards this year stepped up during the pandemic and helped the University meet unprecedented challenges. Others are making progress in several of UVA’s strategic areas, from anti-racism efforts to sustainability improvements.

The awards celebrate cross-disciplinary partnerships and projects among UVA employees, and honor recipients for their leadership, collegiality and efforts in establishing strong relationships that help get things done across Grounds. This time, 11 individuals and two teams have received the award and will be honored at a reception later this summer.

The University launched the awards in 2019, building on a vision UVA President Jim Ryan outlined in his first Opening Convocation address – a University community of people who, when in doubt, “build a bridge.”

“I’ve been incredibly impressed with the individuals and teams recognized with the Hoos Building Bridges Award this year,” Ryan said. “Each awardee has demonstrated outstanding leadership in working across traditional boundaries in ways that strengthen and advance our work as an institution – regardless of the department, school or division they serve.

“Our staff is among the most dedicated and talented in all of higher education,” he added, “and it’s an honor to recognize their accomplishments in this way.”

Among this year’s honorees is:

• Matt Burgess, assistant director of learning technology initiatives, Center for Teaching Excellence.

  With the proliferation of digital technology to enhance teaching and learning, it can be difficult for individual professors to figure out what might work best. The Center for Teaching Excellence hired Burgess in March 2020 as its inaugural assistant director of learning technology initiatives to improve that situation.

  Since then, Burgess has created partnerships with colleagues across Grounds on several important projects related to the selection, implementation, promotion and support of learning technologies at UVA.

  Burgess revised and expanded the center’s Learning Tech website, designed to help connect instructors with the most appropriate tools for their teaching needs. He has also added a review process for new technology to ensure that tools are accessible and secure at UVA.

  “Being housed within a centralized and pan-University unit like the Center for Teaching Excellence has given Matt the unique opportunity to provide support to and engage with faculty, staff and students in every corner of the University,” wrote nominator Kristin Sloane, marketing and communications specialist for the center.

Inclusive Excellence Award

The CTE team received an Inclusive Excellence Award through the Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to support our project to create educational exhibits confronting the history of Hotel D, the CTE's physical home. We were profoundly inspired by the recently installed Pavilion X exhibit commissioned by Batten Dean Ian Solomon. The purpose of the Hotel D Exhibit Project would be to tell the untold stories of the enslaved laborers who built, inhabited, and maintained the space in its early years. A part of UVA’s historic landscape of slavery, Hotel D served as a residence and dining hall where enslaved laborers cooked, cleaned, and waited on UVA faculty and students. This project would seek to bring these important stories to life by learning more about the enslaved peoples’ daily lives, struggles, and contributions to building and sustaining the University.

We expect the stories that come to light about Hotel D will undoubtedly “enrich our understanding of our University, our history, and ourselves,” as Dean Solomon said in his remarks at the Pavilion X exhibit's opening. The Hotel D exhibit would be a permanent, tangible representation of the CTE’s inclusive excellence efforts and serve as a necessary reminder to our team of the importance of continuing this work.

For this project, we will be collaborating with Vice Provost for Academic Outreach Louis Nelson, History Professor Kirt von Daacke, and Computer Science Associate Professor Worthy Martin, as well as a team of researchers and graphic designers.

President and Provost’s Fund for Institutionally Related Research

This is an excerpt from a story originally published by UVA Today.

The President and Provost’s Fund for Institutionally Related Research announced its third round of awards to support faculty research that shows potential to benefit the University of Virginia community.

Launched in 2020, the seed fund supports UVA faculty researchers who design projects to improve life and learning at the University, especially for students. Proposals also support key elements of the University’s strategic plan, “A Great and Good University: The 2030 Plan.”

The fund is designed to provide initial support to launch projects that can either be completed with one-time funding, or, if they will require a larger investment, have the potential to attract longer-term funding from federal agencies, private foundations and other sources. The fund has an annual pool of $700,000, with a cap of $200,000 per award.

“We are thrilled to offer support to six proposals this year, tripling the number of awards from each of the past two rounds,” President Jim Ryan said. “While selecting only some of the competitive proposals that we receive is challenging, Ian and I are impressed with the potential that these projects have to benefit the UVA community.”

Provost Ian Baucom added, “The projects selected for this round of funding all share a deep desire to reach students where they are – in classrooms and dorm rooms, and as citizens and future leaders. Feeling a sense of belonging and welcome has been a recurring theme for students this year, chiefly as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, and I am delighted to see faculty members dedicating their thought and work to improving student learning and experience through this research.”

This year, 16 submissions were nominated by deans on a variety of topics from schools across Grounds. One of the recipients will be collaborating with the CTE team on her project:

• Jennie Grammer, Stern Bicentennial Associate Professor in Education and Neuroscience. Grammer’s proposal, “Using Neuroscience in Real-World Settings to Improve Student Attention and Engagement,” aims to optimize student learning experiences through neuroscience data. The project team [Jennie, along with the Center for Teaching Excellence’s Lindsay Wheeler and Michael Palmer] will observe and analyze instructors and students using a combination of electroencephalography and [other] methods … to improve student attention and engagement in class. The project’s effort to monitor brain function in classroom settings will ideally help instructors know which conditions set their students up for success.