By Amanda Lee Anderson
Several University of Louisville professors recently received a high honor from the Kentuckiana Metroversity program. Dewey Clayton, Karen Karp, Aristofanes Cedeno, Frank Nuessel, and Arthur Van Stewart each received the Award for Instructional Development at a ceremony held on October 16 at Spalding University.
The Kentuckiana Metroversity program has offered this award yearly since 1981. The purpose of the award is to encourage the ongoing improvement of instructional development, such as innovation in teaching or methodology, among the faculty of Metroversity member schools. Since its inception in 1981, this award has been given to over a hundred competition finalists, including many University of Louisville faculty members. In addition, products of the competition include new manuals and textbooks on groundbreaking topics, as well as new teaching styles and incentives for faculty to help students learn in innovative ways. The competition is judged by outstanding college faculty from all over the United States. This year’s judges included Dr. Liahna B. Armstrong, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Central Washington University; Dr. Edward Booth, director of Continuing Education at Columbus State University; and Dr. S. Anne Hancock, a retired professor at DeKalb College.
The four best designs for instructional development are awarded with cash prizes of $1000, funded by H. Charles Grawemeyer, a longtime supporter of higher education in Kentucky. This year’s applicants for the awards included faculty from U of L, Indiana University Southeast, Jefferson Community College, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, Southern Baptist Seminary, Spalding University, and Bellarmine University.
Applicants were required to submit a proposal last May describing the particular course in which the innovation has been utilized. The proposal included the goals of the course and how the attainment of these goals would be measured, as well as the methodology of the course. The course itself should not require a budget beyond the general scope of a department budget, nor should it use technology that is not readily available on most college campuses.
Political science professor Clayton’s proposal was entitled “Political Discourse: Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement,” and was based on the Political Discourse class that he teaches in U of L’s political science department. Karp, a professor in the department of teaching and learning, was awarded for her proposal, entitled “Implications of Research in Mathematic Education.” Cedeno, a professor of Spanish literature; Nuessel, a Spanish professor; and Stewart, a professor of dentistry and gerontologic studies, collaborated on the proposal “Creativity in Later Life Humanistic Perspectives.”
Clayton described the award as a mark of distinction. “It is an honor to be recognized for creativity in doing something that is an avocation for me. I love teaching the Political Discourse class.”
