Process and Requirements
Eligibility
Every Rice undergraduate student who has taught a Student Taught Course (STC) in Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 is eligible for the 2026 STC Teaching Award. This award was designed to recognize the exceptional teaching done by undergraduates at Rice.
Timeline
Tuesday, December 16 — Applications Due
March — Finalists Selected; Candidates Notified
April 21, 2026 — Winners Honored at University Awards Ceremony
Application Form
Applications are due no later than 5:00PM and deadlines are listed under the timeline.
The application must include the following four items to be considered complete:
- An executive summary (no longer than two pages; PDF) describing:
- Your motivation for teaching the course and an explanation of your approach to designing the course.
- A description of the activity OR lecture you are including in your application packet. The description should include:
- Context for where this appears in the course, and a general overview of the activities involved
- Any learning objectives you have for this particular lecture or assignment
- Insight into why you chose to design the lecture or assignment in the way that you did
- Explanation of where and how you are engaging students in effective teaching practices
- Any highlights describing your students' responses to these materials (such as student feedback or descriptions of the types of things your students produced).
- A course syllabus (PDF)
- An example of an in-class activity OR lecture (PPT or PDF)
Note: Do not append any student work
*You may nominate your course more than once. A course can only win once, but a student instructor can win more than once if they teach different courses.
Review of Application Materials
The process for determining the winner of the STC Teaching Award was developed by the CTE’s undergraduate advisory board. The winner is selected by a committee composed of members of the CTE Faculty Fellows. Selection criteria are based on a review of instructional materials and instructor and course evaluations from the Office of the Registrar. The two winners are selected from the self-nominations of courses from spring and fall semesters from the calendar year prior the award ceremony. Both winners can be from the same semester.