TFSC Announces Cronan Award Winners

Photos Submitted

Casandra Cox and Chase Rainwater

The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center is pleased to announce that professors Casandra Cox and Chase Rainwater are the recipients of the 2023 Paul Cronan Technology Teaching Excellence Award.

The award recognizes Cronan, a founding co-director of the TFSC and a long-time professor in the Information Systems Department. It is used to recognize a faculty member who has creatively used technology to enhance their teaching at the U of A.

The award consists of a recognition plaque and a $1,000 Teaching Enhancement Grant funded by the Cordes TFSC and the M.D. Matthews Chair in Information Systems currently held by Cronan, which also supports excellence in teaching. For the current year, the award has a second grant that is also fully funded by the M.D. Matthews Chair in Information Systems. "It's good to see so many great applications and such expertise in teaching; the students are the winners," said Cronan, who served as one of the judges for the award.

About the Winners

Professor Casandra Cox, an instructor in the Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology Department of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, teaches agricultural communications and agricultural leadership courses with a technology emphasis.

Some of the courses focus on graphic design and are application-based, with students using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Portfolio to create marketing communications deliverables including advanced final projects. Some courses focus on electronic communications such as website design using content management systems (CMS), email marketing using Survey Monkey and social media marketing through various technology platforms including Excel, Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, Express), Google Analytics, Hootsuite and Stukent Mimic Simulations (www.stukent.com).

Students also complete certifications to advance their skills and enhance their resumes including Google Ads, Google Analytics, HubSpot Content Marketing, Hubspot Digital Advertising and Hubspot SEO. Students gained hands-on experience in business communications and organic, paid and influencer social media marketing with the technology Cox deployed. After Cox's courses, students completed a professional development course where they integrated examples of their work into professional portfolios for internships and jobs. Cox has been recognized as a Cordes Chair for the TFSC and with the Jack G. Justus Excellence in Teaching Award for the Bumpers College. 

Chase Rainwater, a professor in the Industrial Engineering Department of the College of Engineering, developed two sophomore level courses that taught programming skills to sophomore industrial engineering students in courses that are unique in industrial engineering curricula.

The courses are innovative in their integration of object-oriented programming skills, core industrial engineering topics and applications, many common industrial engineering computing libraries, and the development of both desktop and web-based user interfaces. In addition, the course material is delivered to students via blending of pre-recorded video lectures, self-paced activities, in-class lectures and in-class active learning.

The course content is delivered via GitHub classroom and can be accessed by students outside the U of A. The courses also prepare students to be more competitive for internship and co-op opportunities that often call for computational problem-solving capabilities. The course development work was recognized with the International Innovations in Education Award given by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, and students voted Rainwater the 2022 Best Teacher in the Department of Industrial Engineering.

Each awardee will be recognized at the Teaching Awards Reception in September 2023. Award nominations will open again in the spring of 2024.