Graduate Student Teaching Award

Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Awards

These awards recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching by graduate assistants and is sponsored by the Graduate College.

Nomination Deadline:  Friday, November 15th at 11:59pm.

About the Awards

Each academic year, the Graduate College gives out up to four awards that recognize the best Teaching Assistant (TA) and Teaching Associate (TI)- two at the master's level, and two at the doctoral level.  The awards, sponsored by the Graduate College, are designed to encourage and reward excellence in undergraduate instruction.  Recognizing the role of Graduate Assistants (GA) as valued teaching colleagues is an important part of building our university community.  Winners receive a certificate commemorating their accomplishment and an honorarium of $500. In addition, the master's and doctoral recipients of the TI awards become the Graduate College nominees for the Excellence in Teaching Awards sponsored by the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools.

Award Criteria

The TA/TI must have taught a course for which they had major responsibility at any time in the current calendar year. Teaching Assistants (TA) generally assist faculty with instructional responsibilities. Duties vary by discipline and program, but may include meeting with students, administering tests or exams, grading homework or exams, teaching recitation, laboratory, or discussion sessions, and other related duties.Teaching Associates (TI) generally serve as an instructor of record for a class, or leader of discussion or lab. Exam proctors and graders are not eligible. For more detailed descriptions, please visit the Graduate College website. A BGSU student is eligible for this award once per degree program (i.e., you may win once as a master's student and once as a doctoral; you may not win twice as a doctoral student).

Application Process

Nominations should be forwarded to the nominee’s Graduate Program Coordinator several weeks prior to the final due date, so the Coordinator has time to solicit the nominee’s materials.  The Graduate College will only accept one application per degree program for each award (the TA and the TI). In the event that more than one nomination is forwarded to the Graduate Coordinator, it is the responsibility of the program’s graduate faculty to meet to determine which nomination will be forwarded to the Graduate College.  The Graduate Coordinator will then submit one nomination to the Graduate College by the November 15th deadline.

Review Criteria

The Graduate College Awards Committee will consider the following in ranking applicants:

• Clarity and organization of the application.
• Concise, thoughtful written responses to prompts
• Video evidence of applicant's teaching philosophy and instructional design principles in action

Please see below for a list of required materials for the nomination submission. The Graduate Program Coordinator should solicit these materials from the nominee prior to the Graduate College deadline.