The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center is pleased to announce that professors Dave Bostwick and Lance Cheramie are the recipients of the 2024 Paul Cronan Technology Teaching Excellence Award.

The award honors Cronan, a founding co-director of the TFSC and a long-time beloved professor in the Information Systems Department. It recognizes a faculty member who has meaningfully used technology in an innovative way to enhance student learning at the U of A.

The award includes a plaque of recognition and a $1,000 Teaching Enhancement Grant funded by the Cordes TFSC and the M.D. Matthews Chair in Information Systems, currently held by Shaila Miranda, which also supports excellence in teaching. In addition to co-sponsoring the original award, the M.D. Matthews Chair in Information Systems has generously fully funded the second grant award for the current year.

About the winners

Dave Bostwick is a teaching associate professor and the vice chair for the School of Journalism and Strategic Media. He also coordinates the school's online courses. To maintain consistency across core courses and eliminate textbook costs for students, he has authored three open educational resource (OER) texts.

Prioritizing student engagement, these OER texts incorporate clickable presentations, dialog cards and practice activities through content-creation tools in the H5P interactive platform. Bostwick's work has impacted not only students in his own courses, but students in other courses at the U of A and beyond. The semester following the adoption of one of his OER textbooks, the department saw more than a 20% increase in students who passed the proficiency exam in Journalistic Writing Skills.

In June, he will give a presentation highlighting his innovate work titled "Adding Power to Open Educational Resources through Interactive Content" at the Learning Ideas Conference on the campus of Columbia University in New York. 

Lance Cheramie is a teaching assistant professor within the Apparel Merchandising & Product Development Program of the School of Human Environmental Sciences, nestled within the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.

As an expert in his field, Cheramie specializes in teaching cutting-edge apparel-based courses that delve into the intricacies of retail buying and promotion, merchandising math and global sourcing. He infuses innovative app-based technology in his courses to simulate more accurately work the students will do in their professional roles, requiring them to engage in real-world projects that challenge their understanding and create meaningful learning.

Cheramie partners with industry to ensure the technology that students use in this simulation mirrors what they will see when on the job, and his partners have noted significant increases in the workforce readiness of his students.

Each awardee will be recognized at the Teaching Awards Reception in September 2024. Award nominations will open again in the spring of 2025.