Convinced that exceptional pedagogy is essential to the successful pursuit of the Marquette Core Curriculum鈥檚 ambitious learning outcomes, the MCC Committee has created the MCC Teaching Excellence Award to recognize faculty annually for outstanding contributions to student learning in the MCC. The awardee will be honored for demonstrating these contributions routinely through effective approaches to course design and delivery that have an extraordinary positive impact on students鈥� progress toward the MCC learning outcomes.
All instructors鈥攆ull-time tenure and tenure track as well as full-time and part-time non-tenure track faculty鈥攚ho have taught at least one MCC course in the calendar year prior to the annual deadline are eligible for consideration.
Nominations for the 2024 MCC Teaching Excellence Award are now being accepted until February 16, 2024. Students, colleagues, and department chairs are encouraged to nominate deserving faculty using the .
Dr. Bryan C. Rindfleisch is an associate professor in the Department of History who regularly teaches classes fulfilling the MCC鈥檚 Engaging Social Systems and Values requirements as well as classes in the Discovery Tier. His nominators praised his classes as 鈥渕odels for ethical engagement with the diverse communities that shape the modern world鈥� and emphasized the centrality of experiential learning and community engagement in his pedagogy. They also highlighted how Dr. Rindfleisch brought his research expertise into the classroom, noting that 鈥渉is emphasis on indigenous history, especially in his courses that trace the indigenous history of urban spaces like Milwaukee, ask[s] students to consider the many histories that are subsumed or ignored in the spaces they inhabit, travel and work within every day.鈥�
The inaugural MCC Teaching Excellence Award winner, Dr. Jennifer Henery is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology who teaches regularly in the MCC at the Foundations, Discovery, and Culminating levels. Her numerous nominators, both students and colleagues, commended her inventive assignments, which "require the students to think creatively about how they will 'be the difference' because of their MU degree and how they can use their interdisciplinary education to propose concrete solutions to pressing problems and engage their peers in doing the same."
