President’s Award for Excellence in Innovative Instructional Delivery Winners

March 2023

Dr. Smitesh Bakrania, Mechanical Engineering

The selection committee, after reading how Introduction to Thermal-Fluid Sciences (iTFS) is seen as a difficult course by mechanical engineering majors, was impressed with the way Dr. Bakrania developed and incorporated live and asynchronous tools and methods into his classroom pedagogy. Knowing that iTFS is a student’s first exposure to energy methods, and is foundational to subsequent mechanical engineering program courses, his work is helping students engage with the subject and has made the course more valuable and less intimidating. Dr. Bakrania received the individual $1000 award.

Members of a faculty team from Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine: Steve Garwood, EdD; Jacqueline Giacobbe, MSEd, MA; Dawn Shell, PhD; David Ireland, MSc; and Brian Monahan, CFD.

The committee recognized the team’s work in developing, implementing, evaluating, and improving a process to incorporate transcripts and closed-caption recordings of live lectures to improve the student learning experience at Rowan-Virtua SOM. The committee was particularly impressed with how the team improved compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, addressed standards and recommendations of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and enabled keyword searching for both individual lecture recordings and across all lecture recordings in a curriculum block. The team received a $2000 award.

March 2022

Dr. Jennifer S. Kay, Computer Science

The Award Selection Committee recognized Dr. Kay as the individual award winner. She developed a complete package of material for teaching students, including a manuscript used in lieu of a textbook, a YouTube Playlist of videos, and a set of Jupyter Notebooks with dynamic in-class activities and homework assignments. As Advanced Robotics students use this web-based interactive platform, it helps them to visualize transformations by rotating homogeneous transformation matrices, three-dimensional mathematical models. When students change lines of code, they receive instant feedback as this produces differences in graphical output in the Jupyter Notebook. Next, students use this information and forward kinematics to inform, for example, the placement of joints in robot arms, taking learning to the next level. 

The committee recognized this team for generating an online problem-based learning platform for first year medical students. Some students from backgrounds without strong experience in medical or biological studies might fall behind in Project Based Learning programs. By adding links to short videos mapped to clinical case models, students may perform better on basic science, clinical, and perception of learning questions.

November 2021

Members of a faculty team in the Experiential Engineering Education Department at the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering: Cheryl Bodnar, PhD; Melissa Montalbo-Lomboy, PhD; Sujata Bhatia, MD, PhD; and Cayla Ritz, MS.

The Award Selection Committee recognized this team’s work in “Sophomore Engineering Clinic I,” an interdisciplinary course taught jointly by faculty from the Experiential Engineering Education Department and the Writing Arts Department. “Clinic I” combines laboratory work with writing assignments, including a semester capstone “Humanities in Engineering” project. These four faculty members, for that final assignment, have fused technical research into the material properties of rubber that includes the 3D printing of actual rubber tires with humanities lessons on the Nazi Buna rubber factory, the largest slave labor camp in the Auschwitz complex.

October 2021

Dr. Jason Luther, Assistant Professor in the Writing Arts 

The committee recognized Dr. Luther’s work in “Introduction to Writing Arts,” an entry-level course that familiarizes students with writing history, theories, technologies, and potential professions. The committee was particularly impressed with his work on “The Phono Project” where students conceive, create, and publish a podcast linking archival recordings with new media technologies. Dr. Luther’s examples of projects involving such individuals as Marian Anderson, Johnny Cash, Hoagy Carmichael, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Cab Calloway, and Japanese-Chinese singer Hu Meifang showed how he successfully challenges students to merge past and future technologies as they learn, in his words, “they are capable of doing much more than they initially believe.”

April 2021

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Quzwini, Lecturer and Mr. Mario Leone, Technician/Technologist in Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Dr. Al-Quzwini and Mr. Leone are being recognized for their work in the course Introduction to Embedded Systems, in which they created seven engaging, hands-on electronics lab experiences for remote students. We were especially impressed with the individualized kits each student received to complete class projects, including printed circuit boards designed by the students themselves.

March 2021

Christopher Winkler, Assistant Professor in Radio, Television & Film

Professor Winkler is being recognized for his work in the course Television Production 1, as well as TV Newscast and Sports TV Production, in which he devised a way to get remote students involved in live multi-camera studio television production, one of the key components of the course. By adapting and reconfiguring existing technologies, the roles of on-air talent and of the director could be achieved remotely. His creation of a cell-phone-based student network using both Google Meet and Skype gave the class both remote communication and remote viewing methods that allowed for remote directors. This allowed up to three remote students to be simultaneously involved in a single live studio-based production.

Stephanie Spielman, Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences

Dr. Spielman is being recognized for her work in the course Data Science for Biologists for which she designed and wrote interactive websites for students to work through exercises during remote classes. As this computer programming-oriented course provides biological sciences majors with the coding skills they need to succeed in their careers, Dr. Spielman recognized the critical need for her students to do a significant amount of live coding exercises and for students to engage with her and each other to troubleshoot. These interactive exercises were designed to guide students through the learning process with questions that must be answered with code, an activity that builds to a unified understanding of all the material.

February 2021

Sara Wright, Lecturer in the Biological Sciences Department

Dr. Wright is being recognized for her work in her course Plant Diversity, in which she created a semester-long Plant Photo Journal Project to fulfill the lab requirement for the course remotely. Students were tasked with creating a photo journal that featured 35 different biological characteristics of diverse plants that they encountered in their lives during the semester. This project gave students an opportunity to constantly engage with the course material despite not being able to view official plant collections or go on field trips.

Gerald Hough, Associate Professor of Psychology and Biological Sciences

Dr. Hough is being recognized for his work in his course Animal Behavior, in which he created innovative labs to engage students in the course content while studying remotely. The labs made excellent use of publicly-available live cams, videos and data collected from previous semesters, and students’ own dogs to allow for meaningful and engaging data collection and analysis. 

November 2020

Alicia Monroe, Assistant Director of The Office of Career Advancement

Dr. Monroe is being recognized for her work in her course Black Lives Matter: An Ethnographic Perspective of the Movement, in which she has integrated a number of pedagogies to foster student learning including providing students with opportunities for direct engagement with experts. These include creating an online space where students can tackle the challenging topics inherent in a course on Black Lives Matter and providing opportunities for students to interact with and hear from the community via synchronous panel discussions and guest speaker events.

Tom Fusco, Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance

Professor Fusco is being recognized for his work in his courses Colloquium in Theatre I, Practicum - Production Ensemble, and Stagecraft Fundamentals. In each of his courses, Prof. Fusco innovated to allow students to have similar or enhanced experiences compared to what they would have pre-Covid, while maintaining safe practices. In Colloquium, he made several modifications that not only allowed for participation by much larger numbers of people than pre-Covid, but also included panel discussions about highly relevant topics like working in theatre arts in Philadelphia and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Additionally, he implemented a Covid-mask contest in Practicum Production to bring hands-on learning into the virtual classroom. Finally, Professor Fusco developed and implemented protocols in Stagecraft Fundamentals that allowed students to learn the content and work in the shop under safety-prioritized conditions, highlighting his dedication to students as people and their development in the theatre arts.

October 2020

Vanessa Bond, Associate Professor of Music Education 

Dr. Bond is being recognized for her work in her course, Teaching and Learning A: Elementary General Music, in which she has integrated a number of pedagogies to foster a learning community including dialogue journals and collaboratively annotated course readings. Some of these integrations also allow students to have experiences that mirror the experiences of students in pre-Covid courses. For example, she facilitated observations of elementary music teaching in the real world via videos, case studies, and live Google Meet lessons in current public schools. 

She also developed an assignment that aims to develop students’ technological pedagogical skills, which they are likely to need in their teaching careers. In this assignment, students create a podcast about their musical identity that involves clips of meaningful music and student voices. 

Dustin Fife, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Dr. Fife is being recognized for his work in his courses Research Methods in Psychology, Multivariate Statistics in Clinical Psychology, and Research Methods in Clinical Psychology. Dr Fife’s courses are flipped with the implementation of self-created YouTube videos that have demonstrated high and consistent student engagement. 

Additionally, recognizing that students taking Research Methods courses often forget content from statistics, he developed software and a web app that allow students to practice statistics problems with unique datasets that transition them from their prior statistics courses to the research methods class. These innovations have resulted in student learning surpassing pre-pandemic metrics.