Excellence in Teaching

Types of Awards

The Excellence in Teaching Award

The Excellence in Teaching Award recognizes outstanding educators at SFU. Recipients are recognized with $5,000. This award is open to all SFU faculty members. Three winners are selected each year.

The Early Career Award for Excellence in Teaching

Open to faculty members who have been in a faculty appointment for six years or less. Recipients are recognized with $3,500.

Excellence in Community-Engaged Teaching Award 

Community engaged education is a form of experiential learning that promotes shared knowledge creation through projects designed in partnership with communities. It invites students to contribute their skills, knowledge and experience toward addressing community-identified needs, achieving mutually beneficial goals beyond the traditional classroom. Recipients are recognized with $3,500.

Excellence in Experiential Education Award 

 Experiential education is an approach to learning in which students, through academic programs, purposefully engage in experiences and critically reflect on them, in order to increase their knowledge, develop skills, clarify their values, and build their capacity to contribute to their communities.  Recipients are recognized with $3,500.

Excellence in Open Education Award  

Open education promotes affordable, accessible, and flexible learning through the development and use of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP), including open pedagogy that invites students to actively create, share, and contribute to knowledge beyond the traditional classroom. Recipients are recognized with $3,500.

For more information on the award categories, see the Procedures for Nominations (PDF).

Nomination Criteria

An excellent teacher inspires and facilitates student learning in ways that make a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how students think, engage, and act in the world.

Excellent teachers centre the student learning experience, demonstrate expertise in the subject and in related pedagogy, communicate effectively, and are reflective individuals dedicated to continual improvement of their teaching practice. 

This definition is interpreted using the following principles: 

• Teachers who centre the learning experience transparently engage their students in their own learning, and use diverse and inclusive pedagogies.
• Teachers who demonstrate expertise are current in disciplinary/subject knowledge and actively developing their pedagogical skills.
• Effective communicators set clear expectations, use diverse communication channels, and create opportunities for feedback with their students.
• Teachers clearly demonstrate a dedication to improvement when they are open to learning, challenge their own biases, and solicit and apply feedback from others to their practice.

Key Dates

• September 14: Award nominations open.
• October 15: Award nominations close.
• October: Nominee eligibility is determined. Nominees asked to provide consent for their nomination to stand, and additional information is requested.
• Late October: Letters of support requested. For some awards, additional information is requested from students who have been taught by nominees over the past five years. 
• November: Excellence in Teaching Awards Committee formed. The committee adjudicates the Awards based on the criteria in Policy A32.01.
• March: Awards are announced and presented to the winners at the Awards Ceremony.

Additional Information

For more information on the nomination and adjudication of the Awards for Excellence in Teaching contact Paul Kingsbury, Vice-Provost, Learning and Teaching, at avplt@sfu.ca.