The History of STP’s Excellence in Teaching Awards

Establishment of the D2 Teaching Awards

D2’s EC established the first teaching awards in 1979 under the leadership of its President, David L. Cole whom the committee appointed to serve as the first chair of the Division’s Special Committee on Teaching Awards (Norton, 1980; “Committees and Liaisons of the Division,” 1980). The inaugural announcement of D2’s teaching award program differentiated the awards from the American Psychological Foundation’s annual Distinguished Teaching Award, which was “based upon national recognition of distinguished service.” Instead, D2’s leadership established the awards to honor “extraordinary teachers, who by the nature of their work setting, cannot be expected to be known beyond the region served by their institution, but who are highly deserving of the recognition” (“Announcement,” 1979, p. 191). In addition to honoring those who taught in colleges and universities, D2’s awards were open to graduate student teaching assistants and to those who taught in secondary schools and community colleges, venues in which teachers are unlikely to achieve national recognition.

The inaugural announcement listed criteria for four awards categories: (1) high school teachers of psychology, (2) community/junior college teachers of psychology, (3) graduate students with teaching appointments, and (4) college/university teachers of psychology. The criteria for all four awards were identical and instructed nominees to provide evidence of accomplishments in the following areas: “Demonstrated influence in interesting students in the field of psychology”; “Development of effective teaching methods, courses, and/or teaching materials”; “Outstanding performance as a classroom teacher”; and “Concern with professional identity as a teacher of psychology as seen by professional activity on or away from campus” (“Announcement,” 1979, p. 191). The announcement also noted that each category would award two honorable mentions; D2 discontinued the awarding of honorable mentions after the 1986 awards.

Recipients of the first teaching awards and honorable mentions received commemorative plaques during the D2 annual meeting at the 1980 APA Convention. Award recipients also received $100 and had their photos and biographies published in Teaching of Psychology (ToP; “Teaching Award Winners,” 1980), a tradition that continues into the present. The first recipients were:

Four-Year College or University: Dr. Keith W. Jacobs, Loyola University, New Orleans, LA (Honorable mention: Dr. Michael Fleming, Boston University, Boston, MA).

D2’s EC proposed a bylaws revision in 1979 to establish the Committee on Teaching Awards as a standing committee (“By-Laws Revision,” 1983), which the membership approved (“By-Laws of the Division,” 1983). Tom Bond served as the first chair of this committee (“Division of the Teaching of Psychology,” 1983).

Sustaining the Teaching Awards: The Fund for Excellence

An anonymous donor (later revealed to be D2’s 1979–1980 President James V. McConnell) provided the sole funding for these awards from their inception in 1979 through 1987 (Korn, 2009). Concerned that the teaching awards program would not be sustainable without additional sources of funding, D2’s 1987–1988 President James H. Korn initiated a campaign to raise an endowment fund that would “allow us to increase the size of the award, pay at least part of the convention expenses of the winners, and cover the costs of administering the program” (Korn, 1987, p. 259). To facilitate this campaign, the EC appointed Wilbert J. McKeachie to chair a special Fund Raising Committee with Ludy T. Benjamin and Florence L. Denmark as members (“Committees of Division Two,” 1988), and President Korn established the Fund for Excellence in the Teaching of Psychology to maintain the endowment (Korn, 1988). Initial donors to the Fund included three book publishing companies, a laboratory instrument company, and 36 individuals, whose names were published in ToP (“Contributors to the Fund,” 1988). Subsequent issues of ToP included updated lists of donors.

The EC proposed revisions to the bylaws (“Bylaws and Proposed Revisions,” 1989) that included the addition of Article X—Fund for Excellence, which indicated: the Fund would be used annually and primarily to fund the teaching awards; a board of six persons serving 6-year terms would administer the funds with D2’s treasurer serving as an ex-officio nonvoting member; the board would include a chair, executive secretary, and treasurer; and the board would determine use of the Fund, the size of awards, and investment policies. Stephen F. Davis (1990) announced that membership had approved these bylaws revisions and sadly noted that James McConnell (the initial benefactor to the teaching awards) passed away.

Approximately two decades after its establishment, Korn (2009) provided an historical review of the Fund’s growth and management from its initial endowment of $13,845 in 1988 to $284,644 in 2006. Korn reported that the Fund’s growth enabled the Board to increase award stipends from $100 in 1979 to $750 in 2001; the Board also began to provide travel support of $275 in 1996, which increased to $600 in 2005. The stipend and travel support increased again since publication of Korn’s review. Based on the recommendation of STP President Janet Carlson’s Task Force on STP Awards, the EC raised the award stipend to $1,000 (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 2009). Two years later, the EC raised the award stipend to $1,500 and travel support up to $1,500 (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 2011), which are the current levels of funding.

Initial Fund investments were maintained in investment accounts managed by the Board’s executive secretary and D2’s treasurer in consultation with APA’s Division Accounting Office (Korn, 2009). Sensitive to the increased complexity of financial investing, the Board decided to invest the Fund with TIAA-CREF in 2013 (Smith, 2014). At the time of that decision, the STP treasurer reported that the Fund’s endowment was $329,317, the Board provided $7,000 annually from the Fund’s interest income to support the teaching awards, and the EC supplemented the remaining teaching awards costs (budgeted at $15,000 per year) from its operating budget (Kreiner, 2014). The treasurer reported that the Fund grew to $424,526 as of August 31, 2019 (Holmes, 2019), thanks in part to a $23,913 donation in 2018 from “a trust arranged by Bill and Ginny McKeachie” (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, February 2018, p. 5). The current EC members anticipate that the Fund may now be able to support the teaching awards fully at their current funding level.

Naming of the First Four Award Categories

Each of the four initial teaching awards were named within the first 30 years of the program, but the procedures that each respective EC used in naming the awards varied considerably. The EC named the first award in honor of an early benefactor to the Fund for Excellence. During his tenure as the inaugural Chair of the Fund for Excellence, Wilbert J. McKeachie donated nearly $7,000 to the Fund; in honor of his generosity, D2’s EC voted to name its graduate student award the McKeachie Early Career Teaching Award (“McKeachie endows,” 1994). The first recipient of this named award was Steven A. Meyers, a graduate student at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (“1994 Teaching Award Winners,” 1994).

The following year, McKeachie donated $10,750 to endow the high school teacher award in honor of one of his former graduate students, Mary Margaret (Margie) Moffett, who passed away in 1981 (“Endowment of the Margie Moffett Award,” 1995). Moffett applied to the University of Michigan’s graduate school so that she could become a better teacher of high school psychology. She left graduate school before completing her doctoral degree to teach high school psychology, coauthored an introductory psychology text with McKeachie, and served on APA’s Committee on Psychology in the Secondary Schools. The EC approved McKeachie’s request and renamed the high school award the Margie Moffett Award for Excellence in High School Teaching. The first recipient of the named award was Nancy Grippo of Henry M. Gunn High School, Palo Alto, CA (“1996 Teaching Award Winners,” 1996).

The next award to receive a name was the college/university teaching award, which D2’s EC named in honor of Robert S. Daniel, founding editor of STP’s journal, ToP ( “Robert S. Daniel Teaching Award,” 1996; see Heppner & Reis, 1987, for a biography and interview with Daniel). STP President Virginia Andreoli Mathie (1996) notified Daniel of this honor and invited him to attend the award ceremony at the APA Convention. Unfortunately, Daniel (1996) declined the invitation for personal reasons but expressed his appreciation for the honor and his pleasure that Barbara Nodine, Beaver College, Glenside, PA, was the award recipient in the inaugural year of its naming (see also “1996 Teaching Award Winners,” 1996).

Seven years passed before Dana Dunn, Chair of STP’s Teaching Awards Committee, initiated a discussion about naming the 2-year college award, the only initial award without a name (TOPEC STP Extended Executive Committee, 2002, October 4–8). There was considerable agreement among STP’s leadership to name the award after Wayne Weiten, a Past President of D2 and author of a successful introductory psychology textbook, who taught at the College of DuPage, a community college near Chicago, IL. Weiten was also instrumental in negotiating a favorable contract for publishing STP’s journal that dramatically increased STP’s revenues (Hill et al., 2020). Humbled by the endorsements, Weiten nevertheless requested that the EC consult with the Board of Directors of the Fund for Excellence and those active in Psi Beta for their opinions. In consideration of Dr. Weiten’s wishes, President-Elect Linda Noble established a task force with representation from the Fund for Excellence, Committee on Teaching Awards, and the APA Education Directorate group, Psychology Teachers at Community Colleges (PT@CC), to prepare recommendations for naming the award. The task force submitted its report to the EC but declined to recommend a name for the award and instead suggested soliciting nominations for the name as part of a fundraising campaign (Duffy et al., 2003). Ultimately, the EC voted to name the award after Wayne Weiten (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 2005). The first Wayne Weiten Award recipient was Kim O’Donnell, Naugatuck Valley Community College, Waterbury, CT (Saville, 2007).

Expansion and Refinement of Award Categories

STP’s Long-Range Planning Committee (“LRPC Reports,” 1994–2009, March 2003) recommended developing a fifth award for full-time teachers of psychology within the first 5 years of teaching. Discussion on the Extended Executive Committee’s Listserv (TOPEC STP Extended Executive Committee, 2003, September 15–22) centered on two main issues. First, because the current name of the award for graduate students was the McKeachie Early Career Teaching Award, STP’s 2003 President Linda M. Noble contacted McKeachie. He endorsed the decision to create the new award for early career teaching and expressed his preference for keeping his name associated with the teaching award for graduate students. This award was renamed the McKeachie Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Award in 2005; the first recipient of the renamed award was George M. Slavich, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon, Eugene, OR (Hammer, 2005).

Second, Janet F. Carlson suggested removing the term “full-time” from the category so that part-time faculty could be considered for the award. However, Linda Noble and Bill Buskist expressed concern that part-time faculty would be at a distinct disadvantage for obtaining the award although they both expressed support for those who teach part time. The EC voted in favor of adding the fifth category of awards for full-time early career teachers of psychology (Woolf, 2004). Jeffrey R. Stowell, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, was the first recipient of the Early Career Teaching Excellence Award (Hammer, 2006).

Based on another recommendation in the 2003 LRPC report, President-Elect Bernard C. Beins convened a task force to develop clearer criteria commensurate with each award category, to include the scholarship of teaching and learning among the criteria as appropriate for each award, and to standardize the required application materials and rubrics for evaluating candidates (TOPEC STP Extended Executive Committee, 2003, November 12). The task force submitted its report (Hammer, 2007), which recommended criteria specific to each award. The criteria for the Moffett award (high school) were revised to included four criteria: effective and innovative teaching of scientific psychology, stimulation of student interest in psychology, reflection of APA’s National Standards for High School Psychology Curricula, and professional development. In contrast, the criteria for the other awards included expectations for scholarship and service related to teaching and learning, with higher expectations for the Daniel award (college/university) and lower expectations for the Weiten award (community college) and the McKeachie award (graduate student). Because teachers at any level could apply for the early career award, applicants were instructed to use the criteria for the Moffett, Daniel, or Weiten award based on the level at which they taught. The task force also recommended possible names for the early career award, strategies for increasing the number of applications in each award category, and selection of members for the review panels.

The EC held several votes ² on the task force’s recommendations. They approved the recommended criteria for each of the teaching awards with minor revisions, and they approved the recommendations to select reviewers from among past award recipients and to publicize the teaching awards program through STP’s internet presence, its newsletter, and other promotional materials. In addition, the EC accepted the task force’s first choice for naming the Early Career Teaching Excellence Award, which they “renamed the Jane S. Halonen Teaching Excellence Award in honor of Jane Halonen’s distinguished career and contributions to mentoring new faculty” (“Business Meeting Minutes,” 1990–2019, 2007). Debra Mashek, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA, was the first recipient of the renamed award (Saville, 2009).

Partly because there was variability in the naming of teaching awards in the past, the naming of STP awards is now standardized in STP’s Policies and Procedures Manual (2019). The procedures for naming STP awards now require an open call for applications prior to discussion and vote by the EC.

From its inception, D2’s teaching awards program had been open to any applicant regardless of membership status as were D2’s other grants and awards. STP’s 2007 President Bill Buskist convened an ad hoc working group to recommend whether to restrict access to some web-based resources to STP members only (TOPEC STP Extended Executive Committee, 2008, January 13). After considerable discussion, the EC voted to restrict its instructional resource awards ³ and small grants to members only but to continue to permit nonmembers to apply for teaching awards (TOPEC STP Extended Executive Committee, 2008, February 19). However, in August 2011, the EC revisited this decision as part of its annual revision of its Policies and Procedures Manual, and they voted to restrict all STP grants and awards programs, including the teaching awards program, to STP members only (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 2011). Applicants for any STP grant or award are now required to log in to the STP website as a member before they may submit their applications.

STP’s 2011 President Regan A. R. Gurung convened a task force, one of whose charges was to address establishing a teaching award for part-time faculty, a possibility Janet F. Carlson raised a few years earlier. The EC reviewed and voted to approve the task force’s recommendations for eligibility and award criteria with minor modifications (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 2011). The awards criteria appear on the STP website (http://teachpsych.org/page-1862936); applicants must be “categorized by all institutions at which they teach as a part-time instructor/adjunct instructor who are paid on a per-course or percentage basis, regardless of teaching load” and must provide evidence of “(1) effective teaching, (2) stimulation of student interest/advancement in psychology; (3) demonstrated commitment to student learning and intellectual growth; and (4) advancement of one’s professional identity as a teacher of psychology.” Hillary Hettinger Steiner, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, was the recipient of STP’s first Adjunct Faculty Teaching Excellence Award (Woody, 2012). This is currently the only teaching award that has not yet been named.

The Committee on Teaching Awards recently struggled with clarifying the number of years of eligibility for “early career” applicants for the Jane S. Halonen Teaching Excellence Award. They decided to change eligibility from 5 to 7 years in 2016 based on the number of years required for most college professors to attain tenure (Amsel, 2016). A year later, they revised eligibility to 10 years in order to coincide with the APA’s definition of an early career psychologist (Amsel, 2017). STP’s Early Career Psychologists Committee expressed similar difficulties in defining “early career” members. The EC engaged in considerable discussion to draft a definition inclusive of the wide variety of teachers of psychology, many of whose early careers differ from the model of a full-time tenure-track college professor (e.g., those who teach in secondary schools or who are categorized as adjunct or part-time faculty). The committee ultimately voted to adopt the following working definition for all STP initiatives involving early career teachers of psychology: “STP defines an Early Career Psychologist as a member who is within ten years of beginning teaching of psychology while not a student” (“Policies and Procedures Manual,” 2019, p. 41).

Honoring Awardees

The first honorees received their awards during D2’s business meeting at the 1980 APA Convention in Montreal, Canada, and the citations for each honoree appeared in ToP (“Teaching Award Winners,” 1980). The tradition of publishing citations in ToP has continued throughout the awards history, but the venue where honorees received their awards varied during the teaching awards program’s first 10 years. ⁴ The EC changed the venue from the business meeting to the social hour in 1981–1983, but the committee moved the venue back to the business meeting in 1984–1989 and devoted the social hour to honoring the G. Stanley Hall lecturers. The committee changed the venue back to the social hour in 1990 in order to make the awards presentation a more celebratory event. Some members of D2 expressed concern that presenting the awards during the social hour shortened the time for socializing (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 1993). The EC discussed options such as scheduling the awards ceremony as a concurrent session but chose to keep the ceremony at the social hour to honor the recipients at a well-attended event.

To enhance the teaching awards’ prestige, the EC considered inviting honorees to present a session at the APA Convention, which would require moving the annual deadline for applications from March to January so that their names could be included in the APA Convention program book as presenters (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 1996). The application deadline changed to January in 1998, and it remains in January. However, because APA’s program committee changed the deadline for divisions to finalize their programs to an earlier date (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 1997), D2’s program chair could not be notified of the names of the teaching awards recipients in time to include them as session presenters in 1998, and no subsequent APA Convention included an invited session of honorees.

The venue for the teaching awards ceremony changed once again in 2016, the year after the EC voted to move STP’s annual business meeting from the APA Convention to the Annual Conference on Teaching (ACT; “EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, August 2015). STP President Janie Wilson chose to program her president’s address at the start of the conference followed immediately by the business meeting, which included the awards presentations. Other presidents since then have followed this schedule with minor variations. Moving the ceremony from APA to ACT has allowed the EC to provide an additional benefit to honorees; the committee voted to waive the ACT registration fee for award recipients while retaining the $1,500 for other travel expenses (“EC Minutes,” 1989–2019, April 2019). The move to ACT has also encouraged the EC to reconsider how to honor recipients, perhaps featuring them in a panel presentation at future conferences.

The decision to move the awards ceremony to ACT may have also contributed to the recent growth in the number of applications for each award category. ⁵ During the 2 years prior to the move, the Committee on Teaching Awards received an average of 20 applications combined for the six awards; some categories only had one or two applications. In contrast, the committee received 33 applications for the awards in 2016, the first year of the change in venue from APA to ACT, and that number has increased to an average of 53 applications for the six awards in the following 3 years. Another contributing factor to the growth of applications may be the increase in publicity for the awards. In the early years of the award, the calls for applications appeared in ToP and the D2 newsletter. Now the calls appear in multiple venues: STP’s website, monthly newsletter, Listservs, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Expanding Awards Beyond Teaching

In his first letter as STP’s President, Rick Miller (2019) announced that one of his presidential initiatives was the establishment of two awards to recognize achievements of STP members that go beyond teaching: one to honor those who mentor other teachers and one to recognize those who are actively engaged in their communities. Miller charged Keli Braitman, Vice President for Recognition and Awards, with recruiting chairs and members for two new awards committees, each of which would develop its award criteria and application procedures, publicize the award, and review applicants to select a recipient who would be honored at ACT. Braitman selected Seungyeon Lee to chair STP’s Mentorship of Teachers Committee and Fanli Jia to chair STP’s Civic Engagement Committee. The Mentorship of Teachers Award is designed to honor those who have used their psychological expertise to mentor others in their professional development as teachers, which can include teachers at any career level or in any discipline. Judith Bryant, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, was the recipient of the first Mentorship of Teachers Award (“Mentorship of Teachers Awardee,” 2020). The Civic Engagement Award is an extension of two other initiatives: STP President Janie Wilson’s (2016) presidential initiative on teaching psychology in the community and APA President Jessica Henderson Daniel’s (2018) Citizen Psychologist initiative. It is designed to honor STP members who have used their psychological expertise to improve their communities either through direct involvement or through incorporating civic-engagement pedagogies in their classrooms. Bethany Fleck Dillen, Metropolitan State University, Denver, CO, was the recipient of the first Civic Engagement Award (“Civic Engagement Award Recipient,” 2020).

Concluding Comments

It is difficult to assess whether a teaching awards program has a demonstrated impact on the quality of teaching (Chism & Szabó, 1997). However, there have been some studies that examined recipients of STP’s teaching awards to develop profiles of award recipients in various categories (Korn, 2009). Keeley et al. (2016) asked recent recipients of STP’s teaching awards to complete the Teacher Behavior Inventory and discovered that these recipients valued preparation and student rapport more than other teachers who completed the inventory. These researchers suggest that the perspectives of teaching award recipients may be useful for developing teacher training programs that articulate how master teachers may serve as role models for our own professional development.