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Joseph Benz Receives Pratt-Heins Award for Teaching
Top academic and service awards were presented to members of the University of (1).jpg) Nebraska at Kearney faculty and staff and the Kearney community during UNK's faculty/staff opening convocation on Friday August 18, 2006. Four UNK faculty received $1000 Pratt-Heins Faculty Awards for teaching, service and scholarship and research. Tom Tye II of Kearney, trustee for the Pratt-Heins Foundation, presented the awards.
Joseph Benz, a professor of psychology, received the Pratt-Heins Award for Teaching. A nomination letter by one of his former students noted: "His class marks a significant turning point in my academic career. It proved to be the most interesting class I had taken and allowed me to decide that the psychobiology major was going to be my career".
Benz has been recognized with several teaching awards, including being named the Honors Teacher of the Year in 1991. In presenting the award, Tom Tye indicated that "His (Benz's) contributions to teaching have taken many forms, including mentoring of undergraduate student research, scholarship related to teaching, and involvement in professional and other service activities related to teaching"
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Center for Teaching Excellence Podcasting Service is Here!
The Center for Teaching Excellence has been working with ITS and Distance Education to develop the capability to podcast all CTE events. Click on this link, and four CTE podcasts are available at the CTE Weblog:
http://www.unk.edu/iTunes_U/index.php?id=15550
Planning for Assessment of Service Learning: Dr. Barbra Holland discusses the challenges of assessing student's service learning experiences as part of their overall learning experience at UNK.
IDEA: Dr. Christy Horn presents information on what constitutes a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
How Does the Millennial Generation Differ from Other Generations at the Same Age? Richard Sweeney, will discuss how Millennials differ from generations before them at the same age and explore the implications for colleges and universities.
Cultivating Campus Cultures that Value Student Success: To make our campuses more effective in promoting learning and success in first-year students, we must consider the role played by each unique campus culture
With podcasting of events, faculty and staff who can't attend a live CTE event can access the recording at a later date and can download it to an MP3 player or to their computer.
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CTE Recognition Luncheon
April 27, 2006
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The CTE Recognition Luncheon for spring, 2006 was held in the Sandhills room on April 27th. At the luncheon, all faculty teaching and mentoring award winners for the 2005-2006 academic year were recognized including the following:
- Leland Holdt Award - Charles Peek
- Pratt-Heins Award - Daryl Kelley
- Creative Teaching Award - Joe Benz and Wayne Briner
- Honors Program Outstanding Teacher - Scott Darveau
- Inter-Fraternity Council Teaching Award - Charles Peek
- Student Body Teaching Award - Peter Longo
- Faculty Mentoring Award - Ada Leung CBT, Rich Schuessler FAH, Chris Extrom NSS, Paul Twigg for Graduate College and UNK
The speakers for the annual recognition luncheon are fromer UNK OTICA winners. The speaker at the 2006 luncheon, Dr. Richard Miller, was the OTICA winner in 1997. In his speech, Tales from the Trenches: The Joy of Teaching, Rick shared his philosophy of teaching and the impact of that philosophy on students.
According to Miller, good teachers require students to think, to solve problems, to pose questions, and to wonder about the "why" behind the "what we know". To Miller, teaching is working with students both in and out of the classroom, helping them to achieve their goals as students. As one of his students once stated "Professors teach in the classroom, but teachers teach in and out of class".
Miller believes that scholarship and teaching, although two very different words for a very similar process, are at the heart of teaching and learning. This process is how students come to understand what they didn't understand before.
Rick states "the greatest joy I have in teaching is the process of mentoring undergraduate research". He describes his first experience with research as an undergraduate, and that is where he first developed the belief that wisdom begins with wonder. That wonder is what he sees when mentoring undergraduate research projects. In all, Miller has mentored over 130 undergraduate research projects at UNK that have been presented at regional and national conferences. Miller states his students have very similar goals - to discover that which was not known before. Miller avoids replications and extensions of research projects in order for students to develop knowledge not previously known.
Miller also believes that good teachers establish high academic standards. These teachers require their students to demonstrate a high level of competency. They establish rigorous, but fair, grading criteria and they offer their students the support and encouragement needed to meet or exceed those criteria. He states that it is a never ending source of joy and pride to see our students succeed in ways they never imagined possible when they first came to us.
Full Transcript of Dr. Miller’s speech. (Tales from the Trenches: The Joy of Teaching)
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Calendar of Events
Fall 2006
September 29 – Regression Models for Limited Dependent Variables Webcast: 11:00-12:30 Communications Building Room 101, Brown Bag Lunch; Drinks and Dessert provided
October 12 –Senior Vice-Chancellor Luncheon, Finnie Murray speaking on "Education in and for Democracy". 11:30-1:00 NSU Cedar Room
October 23 –Hands on Faculty Development: Our Excellent Adventures in China 3:00-4:00 Copeland Room 140
October 26 –The Learner Centered Classroom: Building Rapport and Community Webcast: 12:00-1:30 Communications Building Room 101, Brown Bag Lunch; Drinks and Dessert provided
October 27 – Robust Regression Webcast: 11:00-12:30 Communications Building Room 101, Brown Bag Lunch; Drinks and Dessert provided
November 17 –The Teaching-Advising Connection with Dr. Drew Appleby, Purdue University. 11:30-1:00 NSU, Sandwich lunch will be provided.
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CTE Faculty
The Center for Teaching Excellence provides stipends for faculty to attend conferences or workshops related to teaching and student learning. Preference is given to faculty who are making a presentation on teaching/learning topics. Applications should be submitted to the CTE Director. Successful applicants will be asked to deliver their conference presentation or a topic related to the conference or workshop at a CTE seminar. Applications are available at this link. For a list of upcoming conferences on teaching go to http://www.unk.edu/acad/cte/index.php?id=2021
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Teaching Issues: Resources for Faculty'
1. 50+ Active Learning Techniques http://www.vcu.edu/cte/activelearningtechniques.html
2. 50 Classroom Assessment Techniques http://www.vcu.edu/cte/CATs/CAThome.html
3. Learn to Use and Create Rubrics for Grading Written Projects http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
4. Online Resources for Teaching Large Classes http://www.vcu.edu/cte/NFRGmain.html#largeclasses
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Your comments and contributions are welcome!
Please send any comments or suggestions for the newsletter to teachingcenter@unk.edu. If you have information that you would like presented in the newsletter or would like to write something for one of the editions, please contact Jeanne Butler at 865-8495 or by email at the Center.
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