Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award & MAGS Nominee

Who is eligible for this award?

The MAGS Excellence in Teaching Award competition is open to all graduate students with teaching responsibilities enrolled in a member institution during the calendar year 2025

Requirements

Each academic department that hires teaching assistants may submit one nomination for the award.  Doctoral and masters students can be nominated.

Nomination deadline

All nomination materials must be submitted to the Graduate College by October 1st. (If October 1 falls on a weekend or holiday, nominations will be accepted on the next working day).

Materials to submit

• Letter of support from the nominating department head/chair, not to exceed two pages (includes description of any departmental and institutional honors awarded to this masters/doctoral student for excellence in teaching)
• Nominee’s teaching portfolio. Excluding the nomination form, the nominee’s teaching portfolio only is limited to six (6) pages double spaced, 1-inch margins, with 12-point font. You must use the following headings:
  • Teaching Philosophy and Practice. Share your teaching philosophy by describing your understanding of how people learn, and how that understanding, in turn, informs what you value most as an instructor and the way you approach teaching. This explanation could include your fundamental understanding of the purpose of education, the nature of learning, and/or your role as a teacher in facilitating that learning. Please describe the instructional strategies and evidence-based practices that you utilize to support your teaching philosophy.
  • Course Design. Connecting course design to your teaching philosophy and practices, describe how you have approached instructional design in one of your courses. Focus on the main elements of instructional design (e.g. objectives, course organization, content and format, learning activities, interaction, assessments) and provide examples from your course along with your rationale for adopting them.
  • Video clip of "Teaching in action" (maximum 10 minutes). 
    • Provide a link to a 10-minute video clip from a collegiate-level course that demonstrates your teaching in action along with a one-paragraph description explaining how this video is representative of your teaching philosophy and practices. A variety of teaching settings may be used for the video including but not limited to lecture, facilitated discussion, lab, etc. as appropriate to the course. The focus should be on activities that demonstrate exceptional or innovative instruction or student learning, such as student engagement, personalized learning, project-based learning, etc. For asynchronous online courses, a video presentation by the instructor of key engaged learning activities, or learning environments, would be an example of good evidence.
    • Please note that instructors need to adhere to all campus FERPA policies, including those for sharing class lectures. If your campus does not have a policy in place, instructors should pass around a sheet where all present students give their permission, via signature, for the specific video(s) to be shared. 
  • Evidence of Effective Student/Colleague Mentoring. Describe your experience with mentoring students outside of the classroom, whether that be related to the courses you teach or in other settings. Additionally, discuss any experience you have with mentoring your peers or colleagues in the context of teaching.
  • Evidence of Professional Development. Explain how you have used professional development opportunities to grow in your teaching excellence. If appropriate, how have you aligned professional development in the feedback you have received on your teaching?

All nomination letters and student application packets should be submitted to the Graduate College electronically at GraduateCollege@MissouriState.edu. Please send documents that are in either Word or PDF format only.

A short video must be submitted with the nomination information. If additional video is necessary, this will be done late in the fall semester or very early in the spring semester.