Teaching Award

  Copyright: © Heike Lachmann  

Honoring Outstanding Performance in Teaching

Since 2001, RWTH has been presenting lecturers with the Teaching Award in honor of their outstanding performance in teaching and learning at the University. In line with its Excellent Teaching institutional strategy, which aims to improve undergraduate teaching at RWTH, instructors and projects that are particularly committed to outstanding, innovative teaching should be promoted. Outstanding teaching strategies, support for students, or superior commitment to teaching are the key focus here.

Since 2016, awards have been presented in the two categories of “Instructor of the Year” and “Project of the Year.”

In order to make the Teaching Award even more attractive and to do justice to the diversity of activities in teaching and learning, the Project Award will from now on be presented every two years with changing thematic focuses, to be defined by the Rectorate Commission for Quality Management in Teaching. The Project Award is worth 12,000 euros.

The annual Instructor of the Year award is worth 6,000 euros. It will be alternately presented to professors and non-professorial academic staff.

The prize money is to be fully invested in teaching and research activities, with at least two-thirds of the funds to be used to further improve teaching and learning.

Nominations Accepted Until July 14, 2023

The Rector's Office is looking forward to receiving numerous nominations.

The deadline for sending in nominations is July 14, 2023.

 

2022 Teaching Award

In 2022, the Teaching Award was presented in the Instructor of the Year category. The award went to Professor Marco Lübbecke, Chair of Operations Research, for complementing in-person lectures with digital formats such as livestreams, on-demand videos, and the web-based “tutOR” teaching and learning system developed at Lübbecke’s department.

TutOR can be used by students to model optimization problems and thus prepare for their exams. The students are given the opportunity to work on problems and tasks of varying complexity, alone or in teams, depending on the level of knowledge they have already acquired. Lübbecke also uses weekly plans or e-tests, for example, in the Moodle online classroom to help students achieve their learning goals. In addition, the students appreciate the current and relevant examples presented in the professor’s lectures and the culture of open communication.