Four faculty members have received Creative Teaching Awards for 2022.
The Creative Teaching Awards recognize UGA faculty for excellence in developing and implementing creative teaching methods to improve student learning. These awards are presented annually on behalf of the Office of Instruction to faculty who have demonstrated either the use of innovative technology or pedagogy that extends learning beyond the traditional classroom or creative implementation of subject matter that has significantly improved student learning outcomes.
Jillian Bohlen
Animal and dairy science
Bohlen, an associate professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is reinventing how students learn at the UGA Dairy. In Bohlen’s Jersey Active Management by Students program, students get hands-on experience in the dairy business. Students select the animals from the herd, make all mating selections, consult on nutrition, and perform genomic testing. Students make thoughtful decisions to improve the herd. And each semester Bohlen, the students choose their top three priorities — for example, milk production, fat percentage, type, reproductive traits or productive life — then pick the best bulls to represent those priorities, which has resulted in a well-rounded herd.
Keith L. Dougherty
Political Science
Dougherty, a professor in the School of Public and International Affairs, gets students interested in American government and politics through innovative in-class experiments, debates, simulations, and other active learning techniques. His “trust game” helps students easily master topics and can be adapted to other courses. Students rave about his methods in course evaluations: “Dr. Dougherty is the best professor I’ve had at UGA. The course was not easy, which should speak very highly of how great a professor he is since the course was difficult and his students still admire him. The methods that he used to teach were incredibly helpful and really furthered my learning.”
Jennifer L. Gay
Health Promotion and Behavior
Gay, an associate professor in the College of Public Health, uses supportive coaching and small learning milestones to help students learn needed skills. In her inclusive class, students can “choose their own adventure” for project topics. They set the knowledge, skills, and degree of competence they would like to pursue. In each module students, submit practice assignments that prime them for the successful completion of a semester-long project. Each assignment receives extensive feedback, and if competency has not been reached the student can try again, incorporating the feedback into their revision, until they establish competence. By learning from revisions, students establish a mastery of the subject matter.
Amanda Rugenski
Odum School of Ecology
Amanda Rugenski, a lecturer in the Odum School of Ecology, has fundamentally transformed the ecology teaching curriculum. She developed an innovative adaptation of a required capstone field course, ECOL 3300, “Field Program in Ecological Problem Solving,” which has become a hallmark of the Odum School’s experiential education. This Maymester course normally takes 20 students across Georgia. During Spring 2021, she turned the course in “virtual field program,”
where students worked with actual stakeholders from the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, and Flint rivers to identify challenges and design solutions for societal and environmental issues in urban, rural, and coastal ecosystems in Georgia—all while staying in Athens.