Who can be nominated?

• Anyone teaching at the undergraduate and/or graduate level for at least the last three consecutive years in any of the five Faculties at Ryerson who has taught at least one undergraduate course in each of those years is eligible to be nominated is eligible to be nominated for the Innovative Teaching Award.
  • Note: If a sabbatical taken within that period of time, add one more year to the eligibility period.
  • Note: The Chang School instructors are not eligible for this award.
• No individual can be nominated for more than one University-wide teaching award in any given year. The University Teaching Awards Selection Committee (UTASC) tasked with selecting award recipients may choose to reassign a nomination to a different category, based on the best fit with the evidence, if a nominee agrees to it.
• The nomination is valid only for the year in which it is made.
• Any individual can receive the Innovative Teaching Award only once.
• By agreeing to be nominated, the nominee commits to cooperation with the nomination facilitator in providing supporting evidence. The nominee will also commit, if selected as the recipient, to attending the annual Teaching Faculty Awards Ceremony and to a presentation, within one year of the receipt of the Award, as part of the Ryerson Teaching Award Recipients Series offered for the Ryerson community.
• At the time of nomination, the nominee will elect how they will receive the monetary award should they be successful in the competition. They can elect to receive it as a one-time payment in their RFA pay (subject to applicable deductions) or they can elect to have the amount credited to an LTO-based professional development fund (subject to existing professional development reimbursement fund guidelines and approvals).

• Any member of the Ryerson Community (faculty, student or staff) can nominate someone for the Ryerson Innovative Teaching Award.

Contributions to advancing teaching and learning at Ryerson with a particular focus on innovative teaching and on providing students with innovative ways of learning can be demonstrated by some of the following:

• Curricular innovation, curricular/course design and redesign initiatives;
• Writing textbooks, development and creation of innovative teaching materials;
• Innovative teaching with technology;
• Collaborative initiatives at the University level to improve quality of teaching and learning at Ryerson through educational innovation;
• Sharing and dissemination of teaching innovations;
• Other innovative educational initiatives;

Evidence in support of the criteria may include some of the following examples:

• A clear description of teaching innovations, and /or creative approaches to teaching that were developed to improve student learning, including their planning, development, execution and assessment;
• Direct and indirect evidence of the value of the developed innovative strategies and their effectiveness in improving student learning;
• Samples of student reflection on, and analysis of, their innovative learning experience;
• Samples of additional reflection from the nominee(s) and from other participants on the goals, objectives and results of the innovation;
• Description and samples of developed teaching materials, if relevant;
• Photos of teaching situations, if relevant;
• Description of curriculum development activities, if relevant;
• Description of teaching and learning grants received;
• Description of teaching materials developed;
• Evidence of grounding one’s work in good practice and connection to  learning theories;
• Evidence of positive peer review of the initiatives;
• Awards and recognition received as a result of educational innovations;
• Letters from students, alumni, colleagues and administrators, providing examples and describing the nominee or nominees’ educational innovations and their impact on student learning. Students writing support letters should disclose their relationship with the nominee (e.g. current student, former student, research assistant, working under nominee’s supervision, etc.)
• Any additional evidence addressing focus on educational innovation and innovative teaching.

An evidence of an outstanding and sustained record of undergraduate or graduate teaching will also be taken into consideration by the Selection Committee. Outstanding teaching integrates best practices in instruction and assessment with well-defined student learning outcomes, demonstrates effectiveness of teaching strategies, and provides evidence of student engagement. The range and diversity of support for the nominee (i.e. from students, alumni, colleagues, peers, administrators, collaborators, etc.) will be reviewed, as well as the range and complexity of contributions.

1. Obtain the nominee’s permission.
2. Prepare, in collaboration with the nominee, a two-page Brief representing an "executive summary" of the nominee's accomplishments that meet the award criteria and eligibility.
3. Submit the Brief via the Online Nomination Portal by the specified deadline for consideration by the Faculty Awards Committee (FAC).
4. Once the FAC makes its selections/recommendations, the nominator compiles a Full Nomination file detailing the record of the nominee’s accomplishments. If submitted online via the Online Nomination Portal by the deadline (with the recommendation letter included), the nomination will then be seen by the University Teaching Awards Selection Committee (UTASC), which will select the award required;
5. If the nominator is a student, he/she is encouraged to contact the FAC via the Dean's Office to get assistance from a faculty advisor with compiling the Brief and, should the nominee be selected as the Faculty candidate, with compiling the Full Nomination file. This is to ensure that the submission reflects a full range of the nominee's contributions that a student nominator may not be fully aware of.

There is no limit on the number of nominations for the Innovative Teaching Award from any given Faculty, although due to the very specific criteria for the award large numbers of nominations within one Faculty are not expected. All submitted Briefs will be reviewed by a Faculty Awards Committee (FAC). The FAC mandate is to ensure that high quality candidates are identified and their nominations put forward to the Learning and Teaching Office (LTO), wherever a match exists between the candidate’s achievements and the criteria for a specific teaching award.
Based on information in the submitted Briefs and on the criteria for the Award, the FAC decides if a nominee merits a recommendation letter from the Committee. Up to two (2) recommendation letters can be issued in each award category, to be included in the respective nominees’ Full Nomination files before submitting them online. The letter will be written by the FAC Chair. The FAC will also ensure that there is a nominator to work with the selected candidate on a Full Nomination to be submitted online - usually it would be the person who submitted the Brief. If the nominator is a student, the faculty advisor who helped with the Brief will continue to help with compiling the Full Nomination to ensure that the nomination reflects a full scope of the nominee’s activities that may be unknown to the student nominator.

The nomination package must not exceed a total of 25 pages. The required components of the nomination for the Innovative Teaching Award are:

• A one-page recommendation letter written by the FAC Chair;
• A Nomination Brief (1 to 2 pages) prepared, and signed, by the nominator. The Nomination Brief should clearly address nominee’s achievements according to each of the awards criteria. In essence, it should function as an executive summary, pointing to specific segments of the package;
• A Citation (no more than 150 words) suitable for public release, to be prepared by the nominator. Should the nominee be selected as the recipient, the citation will be printed in the special Awards issue of the LTO Exchange newsletter and read during the Faculty Teaching Awards Ceremony;
• A statement of the nominee’s Teaching Philosophy (1 to 3 pages). Such statement should show evidence of reflection on one’s practices as they relate to fostering student learning and their intellectual growth, as well as to contributions to teaching and learning at Ryerson;
• A Summary of Teaching Evaluations (one page) over a minimum of three consecutive years – please do not submit copies of raw data, instead tabulate (or provide a graph of) the relevant information on a single page; more years included voluntarily in the summary will be considered a plus;
• A modified Curriculum Vitae (1 to 4 pages) focusing on the nominee’s teaching, educational leadership, achievements and other contributions to teaching and learning, as distinct from a standard C.V. pertaining to the nominee’s field of expertise;
  • For example, do not include field-specific research publications, but do include presentations at the Faculty Conference and other educational conferences, workshops on teaching & learning, textbooks, teaching awards, etc.
• Letters of support (please ensure that they do not exceed one page in length each) that provide specific examples of why the nominee should be considered for the Innovative Teaching Award. They should include:
  • At least one letter from a graduate (if relevant) and undergraduate student or alumna/alumnus (if the nominator is a student, there has to be at least one letter from a student other than the nominator);
  • At least one letter from a colleague (if the nominator is a colleague, there has to be at least one letter from a colleague other than the nominator);

Students writing support letters should disclose their relationship with the nominee (e.g. current student, former student, research assistant, working under nominee’s supervision, etc.)

The total number of the above required pages is at minimum 11 and at maximum 18. This allows the nominator to include another 7 to 14 pages of additional evidence or support letters.

The Innovative Teaching Award recipient is selected by the University Teaching Awards Selection Committee (UTASC). The UTASC mandate is to help advance teaching and learning at Ryerson through the University-wide Teaching Awards Program by ensuring that high quality candidates, whose achievements meet or exceed the awards criteria, are selected for the available university teaching awards.

The UTASC Chair notifies the Provost and the LTO Director about the selection results. The UTASC Chair and the LTO Director write a congratulatory letter to the recipient;
Following notification to all nominees and nominators, the Provost makes a public announcement regarding all Awards recipients.

After the Provost's announcement, the LTO posts the information on Teachnet, RFANet, on the LTO website and on the Ryerson website, building up to the Ryerson Awards Night.
Also, the LTO publishes a special Awards issue of the Exchange newsletter.

The recipient of the Provost’s Innovative Teaching Award is recognized with an Award certificate and a monetary award of $2,000 at the Faculty Teaching Awards Ceremony. The Citation will be read out. The recipient will have an opportunity for a very brief acceptance speech (1-3 minutes).

He/she also delivers a presentation to the Ryerson community as part of the Ryerson Teaching Award Recipient Series.

November 1, 4:00 PM: All two-page Briefs are to be submitted online.

November 7: Deadline for each FAC to select a candidate, if any, for the Provost’s Innovative Teaching Award and for the Chair of the FAC to communicate the results to all nominees and their nominators;

November 23, 4:00 PM: All completed nomination files for the Provost’s Innovative Teaching Award must be submitted online.

December 15: Deadline for the UTASC to complete their deliberations. The Committee reserves the right not to confer the Provost’s Innovative Teaching Award in any given year if no suitable candidate is identified.

Dalia Hanna, Manager, Learning & Teaching, dhanna@ryerson.ca 416-979-5000 ext. 6598