Teaching Scholar Award for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Faculty engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning use a formalized, scientific, and scholarly lens to examine questions in higher education pedagogy to improve their teaching and make their results public for examination, critique, and replication. This award recognizes scholarship of teaching and learning that involves rigorous examination and investigation of one’s own classes and/or academic programs at Virginia Tech and is designed to recognize teaching faculty members who have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of scholarship addressing higher education pedagogy in their teaching. Recognizing that this form of scholarship may look different across different domains (e.g., engineering, music, chemistry, forestry, philosophy), the award criteria remain sensitive to this variation, and faculty members from all domains are encouraged to submit nominations.
The Teaching Scholar Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is given to one recipient every three years. The next call for nominations will be for the 2026 Teaching Scholar Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Award recipients will receive a $500 award, up to $2,000 to cover travel and/or registration at one conference to present their scholarship of teaching and learning work, a plaque, and recognition at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning’s annual award reception.
Eligibility
To be eligible for the Teaching Scholar Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, nominees must 1) be full-time or part-time faculty members at Virginia Tech, 2) have teaching as one of their primary responsibilities, and 3) present and publish scholarship based on their own teaching.
Nomination Materials
All nominations will be submitted using an online submission form and must include the items listed below. If you have questions, please email teaching@vt.edu.
Submission Form: The submission form requires 1) the nominator’s name, department, and email address (self-nominations are welcome) and 2) the nominee's name, department, college, rank, years at Virginia Tech, area of expertise, and email address.
Nomination Packet: The nomination packet will be uploaded to an online submission form, be a single PDF file, and include the items below to meet the award criteria.
- A statement of the nominee's scholarship of teaching and learning research interests, guiding research questions, theoretical framework, relevant scholarly productivity, and broader impact beyond the nominee’s classroom (2 pages max.)
- A curriculum vita that effectively demonstrates active teaching scholarship with a history of sustained effort. The curriculum vita should highlight current teaching scholarship (2 pages max.)
- Supporting materials, which may include peer-reviewed publications, conference proceedings/papers, and/or published scholarship recognized in the discipline (2 items max.)