2024-25 AU Teaching Excellence Award winners announced

Augusta University’s Center for Instructional Innovation and the Teaching Excellence Awards Review Committee have announced the winners of this year’s AU Teaching Excellence Awards:

• AU Individual Teaching Excellence Award – Jeane Silva, PhD
• AU Online Teaching Excellence Award – Richard Topolski, PhD,
• AU Program Teaching Excellence Award – Physical Therapy program
• AU Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award – Candis Bond, PhD

The Augusta University Teaching Excellence Awards are designed to achieve two goals: to recognize the excellence of AU educators and educational programs and to select nominees for the University System of Georgia Regents’ Teaching Excellence Awards. Winners of the institutional awards will move forward as the university’s nominees for the regents’ awards.

“This year, the competition was especially strong, highlighting the exceptional work our faculty are doing to support student learning and success,” said Jeff Mastromonico, chair of the AU Teaching Excellence Award Committee. “Choosing winners was challenging, as we saw so many powerful examples of teaching excellence across campus. We are proud of our awardees and excited to see them represent Augusta University at the regents’ level.”

AU Individual Teaching Excellence Award – Jeane Silva, PhD

Silva, an associate professor in the School of Public Health, was nominated by Teresa Waters, PhD, dean of the School of Public Health, and Gianluca De Leo, PhD, chair of the Department of Health Management, Economics, and Policy in SPH. She earned the Outstanding Faculty Award in 2023 and the Distinguished Mentorship Award in 2024.

Silva’s passion as a faculty member and mentor lies in leveraging technology and innovation to enhance the higher education experience, so she incorporates innovative teaching practices in the classroom to support student success and academic achievement. Evaluating classroom innovations and implementing key strategies to improve student outcomes is central to her teaching approach.

She believes it is essential to teach students how to effectively utilize their cognitive abilities to improve their critical thinking, collaboration, communication and independent learning skills. She aims to create a positive learning environment where students can thrive and accomplish their aspirations.

This award celebrates excellent instruction by a full-time faculty or staff member and recognizes that individual’s strong commitment to teaching and student success. The criteria for the award also states that the winner should be an individual who:

• Is strongly committed to teaching and learning, which might be demonstrated through activities designed to advance the quality and practice of teaching and learning, develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and/or develop global and multicultural understanding
• Uses effective teaching strategies to enhance student learning, including innovative uses of technology, active learning, learning communities, student portfolios, assessment and more
• Has a strong commitment to fostering the academic success of students through interaction with students outside of the classroom (e.g. advising, mentoring and recruiting)

AU Online Teaching Excellence Award – Richard Topolski, PhD

Topolski, a professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the Katherine Reese Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, was nominated by Kim Davies, PhD, dean of Pamplin College, and Tadd Patton, PhD, chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences.

Since arriving at then-Augusta State University in 1996, Topolski has maintained a passion for online teaching. Topolski began exploring online education in 1997, just four years after the World Wide Web was introduced to the public.

To optimize student learning, he strives to innovate and learn “best practices” for online instruction. As an early adopter of technologically enhanced teaching techniques, Topolski has made several noteworthy contributions, including being part of a team that successfully collected reaction time measures over the Internet for the first time in history and another team that won Qualtrics international competitions for “Best Innovation” and “Best Survey Modification.”

While he takes great pride in educating all his students, he is particularly proud of his work with the United States Army in helping them transform their online and Game-based training programs.

This award honors a full-time member of the teaching faculty and teaching academic staff at Augusta University who demonstrates a strong commitment to teaching and student success and has taught a minimum of 12 credit hours of fully online instruction across the last three consecutive semesters. The criteria for the award also states that the winner should be an individual who:

• Is strongly committed to quality online teaching and learning, as evidenced by teaching and scholarly activities designed to advance the quality of online teaching and learning
• Uses effective and innovative online teaching practices that result in student engagement, student satisfaction, and effectiveness in achieving desired learning outcomes
• Demonstrates an extraordinary commitment to fostering the academic success of online students through the development of rapport with individual learners in and beyond the virtual classroom

AU Program Teaching Excellence Award – Physical Therapy

The Doctor of Physical Therapy Program in the College of Allied Health Sciences at Augusta University values an active education process in which students are encouraged to reflect on their experiences as they grow into autonomous, self-directed and resilient lifelong learners. The program’s small class size allows faculty to get to know their students and ensure they have mastered the content needed to become competent entry-level practitioners.

The program prides itself on an educational process that allows graduates to perform well above the average on the National Physical Therapy Licensure Examination, with many cohorts earning a 100% pass rate on their first attempt. The department enjoys strong ties with alumni, many of whom volunteer their time and expertise to the program.

The award honors a program, department or academic unit at Augusta University that demonstrates a strong commitment to teaching and student success via:

• Individual and collective faculty efforts to improve teaching and student learning
• Methods of assessment of student learning and achievement that go beyond student evaluations and the use of assessment results to inform teaching practices, curriculum development and revision
• Active support to enable faculty to use innovative and effective forms of pedagogy and technology such as critical thinking, collaborative learning, cooperative learning, problem-based learning and learning communities
• Strong links between good teaching and various rewards, e.g. compensation, promotion, tenure, grants, leaves, travel and departmental or program-based awards
• Department/unit policies that encourage collaborative faculty efforts, including team teaching, teaching discussion groups, common assessments, interdisciplinary courses, learning communities and mentoring
• An ongoing and data-driven process for reviewing and reshaping curricula so that achieving academic excellence and serving the needs of all students remain top priorities
• Exemplary programs for advising, mentoring, recruiting and retaining students, as well as co-curricular work with students and out-of-class learning
• Success of the department’s or program’s students, evidenced by graduation, job placement and acceptance in graduate school
• Clear articulation of how quality is defined, promoted and assessed by the department or program

AU Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award – Candis Bond, PhD

Bond, an associate professor and interim chair of the Department of English and World Languages in Pamplin College, was nominated by Seretha Williams, PhD, former chair and professor of English.

Bond came to Augusta University in 2016 as an assistant professor of English and served as the director of the Center for Writing Excellence. In those roles, she enjoyed working closely with students, faculty and staff across disciplines in her writing classrooms and one-to-one in writing consultations.

As a first-generation college student, Bond’s scholarship of teaching and learning research focuses on ways to make learning environments and writing instruction more inclusive, accessible and equitable. The writing center provided a vibrant space where Bond could teach the subject she was most passionate about – writing – while also demystifying college for other first-gen students and conducting research.

Bond is also an active teacher-scholar in her discipline. She serves as president of the Southeastern Writing Center Association and as a co-editor for her field’s longest-standing peer-reviewed journal, WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. This academic year, Bond transitioned out of her role as director of the Center for Writing Excellence to serve as interim department chair of the Department of English and World Languages. She is looking forward to advocating for faculty and supporting their research endeavors while she fills this position.

This award honors faculty members whose scholarship focuses on the art and science of teaching. These nominees have:

• Engaged in the systematic examination of issues about student learning and instructional conditions that promote learning, building on previous scholarship
• Documented the use of strategies for investigating and evaluating the impact of teaching practice on student learning, anchored in the research literature
• Engaged in scholarship that is public, peer-reviewed and critiqued
• Produced scholarly work that contributes new questions and knowledge about teaching and learning
• Developed a well-articulated teaching philosophy that drives research questions
• Documented the dissemination of their scholarship results

Members of the Teaching Excellence Awards Review Committee include:

• Jeff Mastromonico (chair)
• Tiana Curry-McCoy, PhD
• E. Nicole Meyer, PhD
• Rebecca Harper, PhD
• Daniel Kaminstein, MD

For questions regarding the AU Teaching Excellence Awards, email Aisling Reigle.