Director

Jennifer Jefferson is the Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence. She comes to this role after being a Visiting Assistant Professor in University Studies at St. Edward's University. Previously, she taught at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University. Her educational background is in American Studies and Cultural Studies in Education.

She is committed to providing programming and support that is responsive to the St. Edward's community, and she collaborates across campus to address the complex needs of faculty at a liberal arts university. Some of her areas of interest include inclusive course development, reflective practice, and peer learning communities.
 

Administrative Coordinator

Juanita Servín

Advisory Board

Alex Barron, Associate Professor of University Studies

Arcelia Hernandez, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Learning, and Culture

Stephen King, Professor of Communication

Kate Lopez, Assistant Professor of Accounting

Mity Myhr, Professor of History

Paul Walter, Associate Professor of Mathematics
 

The Center for Teaching Excellence offers a variety of programs to improve teaching at the university, including:

• Consultations
• Books & Coffee Reading and Discussion Group
• Faculty Learning Communities
• New Faculty Support
• Innovation Fellowships and Institute
• Teaching Symposium
• Workshops, seminars, and discussion groups
• Resources, including a library of print books and numerous digital teaching guides and articles
• Programs for departments and schools are also available upon request.

Please visit our blog for more information: http://sites.stedwards.edu/cte/

Flexible Planning in Our Individual Assessment Practices (Or, What are You Going to Do for Finals?)
Thursday, July 30 at 2: 00 pm-3: 00 pm
Jennifer Jefferson and Rebecca Frost Davis
RSVP
Zoom: https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/94846062142

Join us for part workshop/part discussion on your plans for assessing students over the course of the semester. Socially distanced teaching can shape how we assess our students and inform the assignments that we craft. In this session, we’ll step through some considerations to keep in mind, some ways to diversify your assignments, and balancing the workload throughout the semester.

Social reading with Hypothesis, Perusall, or Google Docs
Wednesday, July 29, 11 am - noon
Rebecca Frost Davis
RSVP
Zoom:  https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/99449880061

Social reading, aka social annotation, offers another way to encourage student-student interaction as it uncovers student reading practices.  This practice helps students better engage in digital texts through shared highlighting and comments. For hybrid or online classes, such interaction can take the place of shared reading of texts in the face-to-face classroom and can be especially helpful when students are approaching new kinds of texts like academic articles. This hands-on session will cover three tools that can be used for social reading (the Hypothesis plug-in for Canvas, Perusall, and Google Docs) and share example assignments and activities.   

Lessons Learned from Teaching Online
Thursday, July 23, at 11 AM-12:30 PM
Rebecca Frost Davis and Faculty Guests
RSVP
Zoom:  https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/93683946363

Come hear from faculty who developed and taught courses as part of the Summer 2020 Online Initiative. Beginning in Fall 2019, they worked with instructional designers to develop these undergraduate courses for online delivery in Summer 2020 (before we knew all instruction would be online due to the Pandemic).  This session will offer a debrief of what they learned that can benefit us all as we prepare for socially-distanced and remote teaching. These instructors will be asked to share at least one lesson learned that they expect to use in their future teaching whether hybrid, online, or face-to-face.
Moderator: Rebecca Davis

• Faculty panelists will include:
• Emily Bernate
• Lisa Holleran
• Jimmy Luu
• Stephanie Martinez
• Adam McCormick
• Jack Musselman
• Yongshin Park
• Mitch Phillipson
• Casey Sherman

A Common Challenge, Amplified: Making Hard Choices to Fit the Time that We Have
Wednesday, July 22 at 11: 00am -12:00 pm
Jennifer Jefferson and Jenny Cha
RSVP
Zoom: https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/96047445260

Once we get back into campus life, we’ll be navigating some old and new considerations--course loads, grading, and caring for ourselves and our students, all of which might take more time than before. In this session, we’ll outline some of the hidden logistics of teaching in a socially distanced context and discuss possibilities for streamlining your approaches. We’ll consider ways to cull content and hone in on key ideas. We will also talk about ways to build in time for yourself and your students over the course of the semester while still upholding the core values of your class.

You Mean I Can Still Do That?!: Active Learning in the Socially Distanced, Hybrid, and Online Classroom
Thursday, July 16 at 11:00 am-12:00 pm
Jennifer Jefferson and Jessica Vargas
RSVP
Zoom: https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/99621668150

Thinking about new forms of hybrid teaching that we will be engaging in 20-21 can seem daunting--will everything change? Do I have to do everything differently? In this session, we’ll discuss how you might adapt some strategies that you use in a traditional semester for the socially distanced semester. We’ll also introduce a few new technical possibilities, using Zoom, Canvas, or Google,  to help you navigate this new terrain. Finally, we’ll help you make strategic choices for activities that are related to your learning goals in hopes of balancing your workload.

Group Activities with Google
Wednesday, July 15, 11 am - noon
Rebecca Davis and Laura Lucas
RSVP
Zoom Link: https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/99406191047 

How can students collaborate in and out of the classroom? How do you enable student interaction in and between the socially-distanced, hybrid, or online classrooms? This session will cover how to support student group activities using the tools of G Suite, including Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms, and Chat.

Pandemic Pedagogy: Teaching in Our Complicated Context
Wednesday, July 8, 2020, 11 am-12:30 pm
Jennifer Jefferson and Rebecca Frost Davis
RSVP 
Zoom: https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/94250297630

We are teaching in extraordinary times.  While we are all trying to Keep Calm and Carry On, in this session we will take a moment to acknowledge the anxiety and precarity in our current situation. We will provide an overview of possible ways to structure a hybrid class before brainstorming strategies we can use to help ourselves and therefore our students. How can we set realistic expectations for ourselves and others?  How can we strategically prioritize our own efforts? What are creative ways to approach teaching given our current parameters?

Fall Planning: A Discussion with Colleagues
Rebecca Frost Davis and Jennifer Jefferson
Wednesday, July 1st at 2
Zoom: https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/94141782931
RSVP
Want to chat with colleagues about the fall? Curious to hear about different approaches and tools? Join us for this discussion with colleagues from across campus. We'll have some guiding questions and use breakout groups to tap into the wealth of knowledge from across campus. We know that you are trying out new and interesting things in your classes, have questions about different approaches, and just want to connect with colleagues--here's a chance to do all of that at once.

Previous CTE Program Schedules:
2019-2020

Teaching Awards

Given annually, teaching excellence awards at St. Edward's University honor faculty for their exceptional talents and dedication to promoting learning in meaningful, engaging and innovative ways. The selection process is rigorous, evaluating candidates' course offerings, curricular designs, instructional methods, classroom performances, and interactions with students.

Four awards are given annually:

• The Sister Donna Jurick Distinguished Career Award is given to one faculty member who has taught at St. Edward's for at least 15 years.
• The Distinguished Teaching Award is given to two contract faculty.
• The Outstanding Teaching Award for Adjunct Faculty is given to one adjunct faculty member.
• The Delayne Hudspeth Award for Innovative Instruction honors a faculty member who has designed an innovative course project or teaching method.

2018-2019 Teaching Winners

Innovation Fellows

Innovation fellowships support faculty who need time, resources and expertise to include pedagogical experimentation in their courses by providing a stipend, participation in the Innovation Institute, and a community of faculty fellows focused on pedagogical innovation.

Learn about our Innovation Fellows and their projects. 

Read about past fellows.

Delayne Hudspeth, retired professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Instructional Technology at the University of Texas, was a mentor to several St. Edward's faculty members and scores of other master's and doctoral students. Through the generosity of an anonymous donor, Dr. Hudspeth's contributions to innovation in higher education are honored by this award. 

This award recognizes St. Edward's teachers who create innovative learning environments. One award, in the amount of $500, may be given each year. The winning project is chosen by the Hudspeth Award Committee, a committee of faculty members from at least four of the St. Edward's schools.

All applications for the 2019-2020 Hudspeth Award process are due by the end of the day on January 31, 2020. Applications must be submitted online.

Eligible Course Projects

Who can self nominate? Faculty (full-time, part-time, and staff who teach) of all disciplines and ranks are encouraged to apply. Recipients of the award must wait five years before reapplying.

What course projects are eligible? Self nominations should highlight a specific project, assignment, exercise, teaching method or a new use of technology. They may also focus on the entire course, if the course design itself is novel. 

Instructors may apply for the award based on an innovation planned and implemented in any of the three years previous to the application deadline. This year, projects implemented in any of the following semesters will be eligible:  

• Academic year 2016-2017, including Fall 2016, Spring 2017, and Summer 2017,
• Academic year 2017-2018, including Fall 2017, Spring 2018, and Summer 2018,
• Academic year 2018-2019, including Fall 2018, Spring 2019, and Summer 2019

A focus on innovation: Since this award celebrates innovation, preference will be given to projects that demonstrate the greatest levels of innovation and that clearly present the value of that innovation for student learning.

How to Apply

• Read the guidelines and submit your application
• Read previous winning applications

Note: There is a 2000-word limit on your application's total length, though no single question has a word limit.  Please run a word count on your completed application before submitting it through the online form.

The submission form is designed to allow you to edit your responses even after submitting them. 

Selection Process

The winner(s) of the award will be decided upon by the faculty members of the Innovations in Teaching Committee. The CTE director does not influence or participate in the discussion or the voting.  

The committee follows an established review practice:

• Applications are masked to enable blind review.  This process removes the applicant's name and any obviously identifying information from the application document.
• Masked copies of the applications are circulated to all members of the committee for review. Committee members read each application, complete an evaluation rubric, and rank them, adhering to the application categories and questions.
• The committee then meets and holds an in-depth discussion of the projects, leading to a final consensus decision based on both the scoring and the discussion.
• Currently, only one project can win the Hudspeth Award each year.