2013 Instructional Excellence Award Winners

CCCOnline is pleased to announce the 2013 Instructional Excellence Award Winners, who received their official recognition at last week's CONNECT conference. These outstanding individuals exemplify our academic mission and are shown to have demonstrated strengths in our core values and principles: Integrity, Strategic Planning, Quality, and Collaboration.

We’re proud these esteemed instructors are part of CCCOnline; and again, we thank them, as we thank every one of our dedicated instructors, for all the hard work, care, and commitment that goes into educating our students!

The 2013 Instructional Excellence Award Winners are:

Liberal Arts & Communication: Donna Wickham
Donna Wickham has been a model instructor and Content Expert for CCCOnline for the last decade; she has demonstrated instructional excellence and a flair for student-centered innovation. Also, she has shown an ability to draw on her unique experiences as jazz composer, performer, conductor, keyboardist and electric bass player to infuse her classes with an applied understanding of contemporary and historical musical perspectives.

Career & Technical Education: Lisa Wulf
 Lisa Wulf is dedicated to delivering the best educational experience possible to as many of her students as are willing. It is evident from her class communications that her students and their education are her number one priority.  Also, she has taken “ownership” of our Fundamentals class and mentors other instructors when they are teaching the class, making herself available to answer questions and helping them improve their classes.

Math: Roger Bower
Roger Bower has played an important role this past year in the Math Department’s course development process. He is very passionate about online learning and is a committed instructor always willing to take on extra challenging tasks to help us create a quality Math program.

Social Sciences: Wendy Lewis
Wendy Lewis consistently demonstrates integrity and quality in her work, which has included carrying out two course revision projects in the past year, attending Quality Matters training, and implementing QM elements into her courses.

Sciences: Judy Thomson 
Judy Thomson goes the extra mile to explain difficult concepts to her students, promotes student success through proactive interventions, and mentors other instructors each semester. She is eager to make the Anatomy & Physiology course the best it can be and does not compromise high academic standards.  She is a great asset to the team as a whole.

We would also like to recognize our additional 2013 nominees, to whom we also extend a sincere thank you for going above and beyond in their efforts to serve our students.

Carol Kramer
Carol Kramer is always willing to go that extra mile to help her students in her classes. Not only is she very active in her classes, she is also helping her students whether it be by phone, online whiteboards, or any other means of communication. She truly believes in her students and in return the students start to believe in themselves.

Mike Madson has made many contributions to the Science Department over the past year. Not only is he a great Astronomy instructor, he also served as a course developer for the redesign of both AST 101 and 102. He also made great contributions to our new “Science as A Process Lab” Module as a developer. He is easy and fun to work with and never fails to come up with innovative and exciting new ideas for course content.

Wendy Watson not only takes and applies her expertise of adult learning theory to her classroom instruction, she also models best practices for teaching young children within the online environment. Wendy truly embraces the students’ experiences in construction of his or her own learning. She is truly an asset to the CCCOnline ECE program.

Jeanne Wischer embodies academic excellence and is a leader among Life Science faculty. She demonstrates excellent communication and presence in her classrooms, exemplary effort creating lab tutorials and audio-visual guidance for her students, and success in course development. Jeanne’s commitment to CCCOnline students shows in her work. Her Program Chair looks for opportunities to share her work product with others so they may be inspired.