The Vice Provost for Academic Innovation and the Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI) invite Cornell faculty to apply for a Creative Teaching Award. This award recognizes classroom experiences and teaching implementations, with the goal of inspiring other instructors through the sharing of new ideas, methods, and strategies at Cornell. This year's theme highlights creative approaches to assessing student learning.

2024-25 Call for Applications

Have you found better ways to allow students to demonstrate their learning? New ways to engage students in assignments that mirror real-world experiences, or opportunities for students to practice, learn, and improve? Assessment practices that are fair, consistent, and equitable? Creating meaningful, effective assessments can be challenging, especially when scaling them for large classes. Yet, many faculty have been trying alternatives to high-stakes exams or research papers. This competition seeks to draw out, recognize, and share innovative approaches to assignments and assessments. 

Up to five examples of innovative assessment practices will be selected to receive an award of $5,000 payable to a faculty research account. Award winners will collaborate with the Center for Teaching Innovation to document and share their experiences in online case studies for possible adoption by colleagues, and present their experiences at the Provost's Teaching Showcase scheduled for April 2025. 

• Application deadline: January 13, 2025
• Submit your application 

Eligibility and Requirements

• All full-time faculty members (tenure-track, tenured, and RTE faculty) are invited to apply. Applications can also be submitted on behalf of a course team that includes postdocs, graduate students, or professional staff.
• Applications should describe innovations that have already been implemented in at least one class at Cornell.  
• The principal faculty member(s) will participate in the Provost’s Teaching Showcase event to share their teaching strategy with other faculty. 
• Successful award winners will collaborate with CTI to document their teaching strategy in a case study for possible adoption by colleagues.

Application Process

Interested faculty are invited to share their creative teaching approach via an online application, which must include:

1. Instructor’s name, department(s) and college(s)
2. Context of the course(s) in which the creative teaching approach has been implemented and your rationale for trying something new.
3. A description of the targeted student learning outcomes and how this teaching strategy better supports student learning or experiences.
4. An overview of the idea and its implementation.
5. Reflection on what went well, challenges, and lessons learned.

2023-2024 Awardees

Theme: Creative Responses to Generative AI

The Awardees documented their approaches and the results of their innovative work for a series: Creative Teaching Case Studies. These case studies are downloadable and may be adapted for different courses and learning environments.

• Jennifer Birkeland, Landscape Architecture, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
• Tracy Carrick, Knight Institute, College of Arts & Sciences
• Juan Hinestroza, Fiber Science and Apparel, College of Human Ecology
• Peter Katzenstein (students: Amelia Arsenault; Peter Joachim), Government, College of Arts & Sciences
• Amie Patchen, Public and Ecosystem Health, College of Veterinary Medicine

Honorable Mentions       

• Toby Ault, Atmospheric Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
• Michael Jefferson, Architecture, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
• Eddy Man Kim, Human Centered Design, College of Human Ecology
• Suzanne Lane, Engineering Communications Program, College of Engineering
• Melissa Meyers, Knight Institute/English Language Support, College of Arts & Sciences
• Qian Yang, Information Science, Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information