Scholarship of Excellence in Teaching Fellowship

“Over the past year, I’ve grown more intentional and reflective as an educator. I’ve always focused on helping students build strong quantitative and analytical skills, but this fellowship pushed me to think more deeply about how students learn, how they struggle, how they build confidence, and how I can design structures that support them through complex STEM material. I find myself paying more attention to metacognition, transparency, and student engagement in both lecture and lab.”

Kevin Morris, Chemical and Biological Sciences, 2025 Cohort  

“This fellowship helped me become more intentional in how I design learning, not just around content but around how students think and retain information. I’ve shifted away from focusing on content coverage and toward building in more opportunities for retention, transfer, and critical thinking. One of the most impactful parts was meeting faculty from other disciplines and realizing that many of us struggle with the same issues—like engagement, motivation, and cognitive overload—no matter what we teach. Hearing how others approach those challenges was incredibly helpful, and I’ve picked up several strategies I wouldn’t have found on my own.”

Robert Tollefson, Chemical and Biological Sciences

“I’m most grateful for the camaraderie among the cohort members and for the reading materials, both of which offered me the opportunity to enhance my approach to teaching with increased purpose and agency, and to broaden my repertoire of assignments and activities with those intentions in mind. I believe it’s important to occasionally step back from the busy pace of our lives and give ourselves a moment to reflect on the choices we make, in our lives and our teaching, on the connections we feel and the impact we have on students, colleagues and the community. This fellowship has given me those moments, as I connected to the readings and even more so to the discussions and heartfelt posts of my cohort members. I would recommend the fellowship to anyone who believes they would benefit from more purposeful teaching and from shared connections to other faculty members.”

Valerie Tanner, World Languages, 2025 Cohort 

"Over the past year, I’ve become more deliberate about my teaching. The fellowship got me to slow down in a way I honestly never do during the semester. Instead of jumping from one task to the next, I actually had space to think about what I’m doing in the classroom and why. I’ve been paying closer attention to how my course design, assignments, and feedback shape the way students learn and show up. A lot of the growth I’ve felt this year might look subtle from the outside, but internally it’s been a real shift. I’m not reinventing my classes, but I am shifting how I approach the parts that matter most.”

Daniel Wilson, Sociology, 2025 Cohort