Faculty of Education, Queen’s University
Teaching Excellence Fellowship

Mandate

The Teaching Excellence Fellowship Program is designed to expand the Faculty’s understanding of excellence in teaching. Fellowships enable exemplary educators to visit the Faculty, to present their work, to engage with faculty, graduate students, and local teachers, and to produce with faculty an impact statement and a professional resource.

The Fellowship

The visits of fellows may vary in form (e.g., a combination of workshops, consultation, performances, public addresses, seminars, school visits, symposia, professional conversations, and online activities), timing (during pre-service year—fall or winter term—or during spring or summer terms), and on-site duration (single block visit of one week or equivalent in several short visits).

The fellow and host will be responsible for producing a professional resource, something useful in our pre-service program; e.g., case materials illustrating aspects of exemplary practice, viewable from various perspectives (special needs, equity, assessment, curricular approach, action research); teaching resources; a video/narrative; or a paper. These resources could be directed towards teacher candidates or faculty or both.

Fellowships are completed within one academic year. The host will prepare an impact statement at the end of the fellowship, summarizing the accomplishments and describing the resource created. All of these statements will be published on the Teaching Excellence Fellowship Web site, with links to the resources.

Selection

Selection will be made annually by a three-person selection committee consisting of faculty appointed by the Dean.

Fellows will be chosen for: (1) their excellence and innovation in their instructional practices; (2) their commitment to inquire openly about their practice in order to improve it, and (3) their potential to inspire beginning teachers. In addition, the committee will give special consideration to fellows who have worked in settings with significant socio-economic, intellectual, ethno-cultural, or linguistic challenges.

Candidates will be drawn from a broad talent pool locally, nationally, and even internationally including, but not restricted to, the lists of recipients of the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence, The Governor General’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching History, and the Premier’s Awards for Teaching Excellence (Ontario), associate teachers, and teachers involved in research and development projects with faculty members. For this purpose, lists will be maintained by the Teaching Excellence Fellow Assistant.

Hosting

Given that the task of hosting is critical to the success of the program, the selection of hosts is coupled with the selection of the fellows. Applications are handled in two modes. In the “host first” mode, a faculty member may apply to be a host, indicating the profile of the desired fellow while not having a particular person in mind. The committee will then work with the host to find a suitable fellow from the available pool. In the “host with” mode, a faculty member works with a candidate fellow to submit an application jointly. In addition, the committee itself may choose and host one fellow per year.

Administration

The Committee will meet in early March to prepare the call for proposals, including any refinements to the terms and application form. The Committee may wish to include in the call examples of suitable fellowship programs. The call will be made by the Teaching Excellence Fellowship Assistant in early March, with a reminder in early April. Applications will be due the first Monday in May and adjudication results will be announced within two weeks. Inquiries about applications will be handled by the chair, through the Teaching Excellence Fellowship Assistant.

The normal tenure of fellowships will be during the year from July through June. An exception may be made for summer tenure; if the immediate summer is too soon, the following summer may be used.

Following the visit and completion of the professional resource, and not later than the end of June in the year of tenure (or end of August for delayed summer tenure), the host will submit to the Committee a Web-publishable impact statement describing the professional resource and the nature and benefit of the visit.

All allocated funds must be used by the end of June (end of August for delayed summer fellowships) in the year of tenure.

The Committee will meet in September to review and publish the impact statements and professional resources from the previous year, to discuss any adjustments to the program, and to prepare the budget.

Appointments

In May, the Dean will appoint a Committee of three faculty members, each of whom will serve for a three-year term. The terms will be staggered and the third-year member will serve as chair. The Committee year will run from July through the following June.

The Dean will appoint a Teaching Excellence Fellowship Assistant to assist the committee in its work (management of files and lists of pool of fellows, budget preparation, announcements to faculty, communication with host and fellow applicants,Web site maintenance) and to support hosts and fellows (visit arrangements, publicity, expense handling, and production and publishing of the educational resource).

Budget

Each year in the fall, the Committee will submit a budget request to the Dean and to the MSTE Coordinator, each of whom will approve amounts to be made available for the following year. Normally, the budget will be set to accommodate up to four fellows per year. The budget will include fellow travel and subsistence, substitute teaching if required, an honorarium of $750, modest hospitality, publicity, and up to $1000 for teaching resource production (editing, storage media).

Application Form

For the 2008-2009 academic year, applications are due July 11, 2008. Please submit a signed paper copy to the office of the Dean, attention Teaching Excellence Fellowship Assistant. Also, please submit an electronic copy to the chair of the committee, Bill Egnatoff egnatoff@queensu.ca.