Awards

About the R1edu Faculty Award for Distinguished Faculty Contributions to Online Learning

Presented annually, the R1edu Award for Distinguished Faculty Contributions to Online Learning acknowledges innovative and stellar work of faculty in online learning at member institutions of the R1edu consortium. Past winners have come from the University of Florida, the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, Iowa State University, and the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The criteria for the award are as follows:

1. A faculty or instructor must contribute significantly to online distance learning by either
• creating a new online distance learning program
• leading a department into the distance learning arena
• leading faculty toward a greater understanding and implementation of distance learning efforts
• creating an innovative distance learning policy, procedure, or infrastructure for the campus
2. The faculty/instructor innovation must occur during the 12-month period, May -April, leading up to the current year's award application deadline
3. The distance learning effort should contribute to the work of a research institution
4. The distance learning innovation should be aligned with the leading technology

A call for nominations is issued by email to designated representatives of R1edu member universities in the spring or contact Dave Szatmary, vice provost, University of Washington Educational Outreach, at dszatmary@extn.washington.edu.

Past recipients of the R1edu Faculty Award include:

2007
Jan Miernowski, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Professor Miernowski, a faculty member in the department of French and Italian, created the highly innovative course "French and Italian Renaissance Literature Online" (see http://frit.lss.wisc.edu/RenLit/). Designed to simulate a journey through Renaissance France and Italy led by a group of faculty guides, this full multimedia offering employs the unique strengths of online presentation and the latest interactive tools to train students in advanced interpretation of artistically complex and ideologically multilayered texts. Special features include guidance to specific passages in the text, clues to unravel the hidden meanings, and immediate and continuous feedback at every step. Miernowski refers to this interactive reading instructional strategy as "e-intertextuality."

2006
John Wedman, University of Missouri-Columbia
Dr. Wedman, director, School of Information Science and Learning Technologies in the College of Education, created the first fast-track online master's at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The one-year online program in Educational Technology offers condensed courses in an 8-week format.

2005
Craig Tapley, University of Florida
Dr. Tapley, professor, Warrington College of Business, served as a pioneer among faculty at the University of Florida. By restructuring course content and utilizing WebCT VISTA, he moved his class Web presence from "Web site as filing cabinet" to "Web site as virtual classroom," where context, community, and collaborative learning enhance the student experience.

2004
Linda Ettinger and Jane Maitland-Gholson, University of Oregon
Ettinger, academic director, and Maitland-Gholson, associate professor, developed the online Applied Information Management (AIM) master's degree program at UO. This degree combines knowledge in management, business and visual communication with an awareness of technology and its global context. They also developed several online courses including "Teaching in a Virtual Environment," a course to educate faculty in best practices for successful online teaching.

Mamidala Ramulu, University of Washington
Dr. Ramulu secured funding from the Boeing Company to design and implement an online, interdisciplinary master's degree in Manufacturing Engineering. The professor of mechanics, materials and design in the UW College of Engineering developed four online courses and helped create a new online, real-time web conferencing system that serves as a main instructional tool for the program. This online tool has wide applications for other types of programs and content areas.

2003
Douglas D. Gemmill, Iowa State University
Dr. Gemmill, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, created and developed the Systems Engineering Graduate Program at ISU. His achievement led to the development of other online offerings at the ISU College of Engineering.

Joe Mahoney, University of Washington
Dr. Mahoney, a professor with the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, developed a new model for a distance learning program in Construction Engineering. The program, the first of its kind in the nation, allows engineers to pursue one of three certificates, or to combine them towards a master's degree.

Stephen Muench, University of Washington
Muench, a graduate student in engineering, is co-developer (with Dr. Mahoney) of the Pavement Construction online course for the online Construction Engineering program, and is involved in the planning and instruction of future courses for that program.

2002
David Notkin, University of Washington
Notkin helped secure two major federal grants to develop online programs at the UW. He was the co-principal investigator for a $1.4 million grant from the Learning Anywhere Anytime Partnership at the U.S. Department of Education. That grant has developed four online certificate programs for Internet professionals in partnership with Prentice-Hall/Pearson, the Public Broadcasting Corporation, and the World Organization of Webmasters. He also helped secure a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to develop an online Bachelor of Science in Computing and Software Systems.

2001
Ed Lazowska, University of Washington
Lazowska was instrumental in helping to create the UW Computer Science & Engineering Professional Masters Program, an evening/distance program for fully-employed professionals utilizing Internet conference technology. He is also cited for his role in the Tutored Digital Video Instruction program for making UW introductory computer science courses available to community and technical colleges across Washington State.

About R1edu
R1edu is a consortium of top U.S. research universities that pool their resources and knowledge to provide access to distance learning classes and reference materials. The consortium's website (www.r1edu.org) allows students to search classes and programs by subject, type or institution. Participating institutions are members of the Carnegie Foundation and of the prestigious Association of American Universities.