Outstanding Teaching Award

Continuing a 50-year tradition, the MTSU Foundation will fund awards again this year.

Past Recipients

Click here for a complete listing of past recipients.

Guidelines for Nomination and Submission

  1. Faculty, students, and alumni may nominate a faculty member by sending an email to Brian Hinote, Associate Vice Provost, Data Analytics and Student Success, (Brian.Hinote@mtsu.edu) copying Angie Price (Angie.Price@mtsu.edu) with “Outstanding Teaching Award Nomination” in the subject line and a brief rationale in the body of the message by Monday, October 16.  Faculty must be nominated by individuals in at least two of these three categories:  faculty members, students, and alumni.
  2. Only full-time faculty who have worked at MTSU for at least four years are eligible to apply.
  3. Previous award winners may be nominated five years after receiving an OTA.
  4. Nominees must submit all materials to the dropbox in the D2L shell which will appear under your development tab.
  5. The completed submission is due by the close of business on Monday, March 11, 2024. No revisions or additions may be made following the deadline.

Required Application Materials and Criteria for Evaluation

Outlined below are the materials to be considered for this award. Failure to follow these requirements will result in elimination from consideration. 

  • Request four letters of support in the following categories to be sent directly to Angie.Price@mtsu.edu by the due date.
    • Letters from one student and one MTSU graduate.
    • Letters from two faculty familiar with your teaching, advising, mentoring, and/or curriculum development. One letter must be from a peer who has personally observed your teaching.

Please submit the following Word or PDF files to the D2L dropbox (under Assessments):

  • Teaching curriculum vitae: Include ONLY the last four years of relevant teaching information. Do not submit a complete CV.
    • Name and title (ex: Jane Doe, Ph.D., Associate Professor)
    • Department
    • Date of hire at MTSU as a full-time faculty member
  • Use the following bolded main headings and potential subheadings:
    1. Teaching Improvement and Effectiveness: Teaching improvement workshop/conference attendance, course and/or program redesign and development, grants for course improvement, certifications relevant to teaching, and other teaching award/nominations.
    2. Service and Mentorship: Invited lectures, peer/student mentoring, published and presented scholarship of teaching and learning, published and presented scholarship with students, thesis/dissertations advising, individual projects, and advising of student organizations.
    3. Student Engagement and Achievement: Student presentations and awards, student job attainment/advancement, and other student recognition.
  • Reflection on teaching excellence: A three-to-five-page statement reflecting on how your mentorship of students has led to student achievement, how you have adapated your teaching or made changes in response to what you learned at workshops and conferences, how you have modified your teaching methods in response to student feedback and evaluations, and how your research inspires or informs your teaching. Focus again on the past  four (4) years.
  • Student evaluations from all courses taught over the last eight fall and spring semesters (begin with the fall semester of your nomination). In D2L, go to My Evaluations, select the semester, and select all courses. Go to batch report, select short report plus comments, and run a single pdf for each semester. For older evaluations, please provide a comparable format. In Adobe, please merge all reports into a single PDF (please disregard the COVID semester where MTSU did not require evaluations).
  • Supporting materials/artifacts. You can submit up to three (3) files, one for each of the main headings (I, II, III above). Your file can be a PDF or Word file and can contain links to outside sources, if appropriate.

Final Selection

The University Outstanding Teaching Award Committee will meet and rank the top three candidates. The committee chair will send the ranked list to Brian Hinote, Associate Vice Provost, Data Analytics and Student Success, who will notify the recipients prior to the Annual Fall Faculty meeting.