Congratulations to 2018–19 Faculty Development Award recipients

by Michelle Saport  |   

The Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence (CAFE), UAA's faculty development center, is pleased to announce the annual COW (CAFE Oh Wow!) Faculty Development Awards for 2018-19. The success of UAA's faculty development initiatives and programs are due in large part to the willingness of UAA faculty and staff who share their time and expertise with their colleagues. Two national research studies on unusually effective universities have indicated that investment in faculty development is one of the top ways in which a university can increase its retention rates and student success.

Chancellor Sandeen and 2018-19 COW Award recipients

Left to right: Dr. Andre Thorn, Devin Feighan, Chancellor Sandeen, Dr. Corrie Whitmore, Stasia Straley and Paul Wasko.

COW Award recipients - who receive highly coveted bovine-themed figurines to appreciative "moos" from the audience - have made major contributions to faculty development initiatives across the UAA system. Please join us in congratulating:

  • Dr. Andre Thorn (director, UAA Multicultural Center; interim director, Native Student Services) for his passionate work in advancing the use of ePortfolios by students, faculty, and among Student Affairs entities. Dr. Thorn's efforts have resulted in outstanding explorations of the intersections of student identity, intellectual/academic growth, and metacognition.
  • Devin Feighan (instructional designer, Academic Innovations & eLearning) for exceptional support of faculty in eLearning and online contexts. Devin's work has been particularly powerful at Kodiak College, where he's been involved in an effort to strengthen accessibility in course materials, and in the College of Business and Public Policy, where he has supported a two-year effort to transition the face-to-face Master of Science in Global Supply Chain Management program to a 100 percent online format.
  • Stasia Straley (associate professor, Accounting) for her sustained effort in advancing the use of active learning techniques among faculty, as well as for her exemplary leadership in collegial discussions of teaching through CAFE's GIFTS sessions (Great Ideas for Teaching Students). In addition to her leadership in faculty development efforts, Professor Straley continues to work on her own teaching, most recently adopting the High Impact Practice of Collaborative Learning in her accounting courses.
  • The following group was recognized for collaborative efforts in developing an ePortfolio template and resources used in faculty P&T files, as well as offering support programming and creating materials to support the file development process:
    • Marian Bruce, director, Faculty Services
    • Paul Wasko, eWolf ePortfolio Program
    • Shamai Thacker, eWolf ePortfolio Program
    • Frances Basketfield, eWolf ePortfolio Program
    • Eric Baldwin, Academic Innovations & eLearning
    • Dr. Kat Milligan-Myrhe, Biological Sciences
    • Dr. Jennifer Stone, English
    • Dr. Corrie Whitmore, College of Health

For more information on these awards or on CAFE programming, please contact Luis Chavez (lchavejr@alaska.edu, 786-4644).

Creative Commons License "Congratulations to 2018–19 Faculty Development Award recipients" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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