It’s a sign of a university’s quality when teachers try hard to find new ways of encouraging students to engage with the subjects they are teaching. Instructors need to find innovative teaching and learning methods to help their students get a grasp on complex topics. The Innovative Teaching Award, presented each year by the office of the Vice-Rector for Academic Programs and Student Affairs, is intended to provide an incentive for teachers to develop new formats. The 2017 award was the first to be assigned a thematic focus and the call went out for the most exciting courses in the field of research-led teaching. Of the 18 courses nominated, a jury of experts selected five of the most groundbreaking concepts. Two more courses were presented with the eTeaching award for their progressive use of new technologies.
Innovative Teaching and eTeaching Award Winners
Applied Econometrics
Interdisciplinary Socio-Economic Research Project I
Interdisciplinary Socio-Economic Research Project I + II
International Tourism – Principles and Practice
Special Topic in Economic Policy: Gender Relations and Economics
Jesús Crespo Cuaresma
Karin Heitzmann, Astrid Pennerstorfer
Katharina Miko-Schefzig, Karin Sardadvar
Link
Margit Kastner, Claudia Bauer-Krösbacher
Alyssa Schneebaum
Basics of ICT
Specialization in Business Administration Course IV – Business Training & Education Management
Michael S. Feurstein
Franz-Karl Skala
Our teachers are not just innovative, they also manage to inspire their students and to explain complex interrelationships in easily understandable ways. For the Excellent Teaching Award, students have the opportunity to nominate the teachers that impressed them the most in the past year. Close to 3,000 students participated in the 2017 vote, and the jury selected ten award winners from all the nominations submitted.
Excellent Teaching Award winners
- Ingrid Dobrovits, Institute for Business Education
- Martin Herles, Institute for English Business Communication
- Gregor Kastner, Institute for Statistics and Mathematics
- Lisa Kreilinger, Financial Accounting and Auditing Group / Institute for Business Education
- Georg Lienbacher, Institute for Austrian and European Public Law
- Philipp Loser, Institute for Public Sector Economics
- Renate Meyer, Institut für Organization Studies
- Gerhard Speckbacher, Institute for Strategic Management and Management Control
- Martin Spitzer, Institute for Civil & Business Law
- Barbara Stöttinger, Institute for International Marketing Management
Ars Docendi State Award
The innovative teaching concepts developed by WU’s Jesús Crespo Cuaresma (Applied Econometrics) and Christof Miska (Global Stakeholder Management and Corporate Responsibility) were recognized at the 2017 Ars Docendi state award ceremony for excellent teaching at Austria’s public universities. They were ranked among Austria’s three best university-level teachers in the categories “research-based teaching with a focus on academic research techniques” and “personality-oriented approaches and/or approaches that encourage creativity in courses or student support.”
CEMS Course of the Year
As in previous years, WU did not come home from the CEMS (The Global Alliance in Management) Annual Event empty-handed: The Course of the Year Award went to WU’s Christian Wagner (Institute for Finance, Banking and Insurance) for his course in Multinational Financial Management. The course Strategy as Practice – Critical Thinking, Problem Formulation, and Biases, held by Phillip C. Nell (WU) and Diego Stea (Copenhagen Business School) was selected as the best block seminar.
Entrepreneurship Spotlight Challenge
WU provides its students with a solid entrepreneurship education: In addition to teaching entrepreneurship skills, it is important to us to make sure that our students have the opportunity to put theory into practice in real-life projects. This approach was honored in the 2017 Entrepreneur Spotlight Challenge. A jury of experts from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) selected the world’s best entrepreneurship programs for the distinction. WU’s Entrepreneurship Avenue was the only European project among the 15 programs selected.
Education for Sustainable Development
In November, two of WU’s programs were awarded distinctions by the Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management as part of the UNESCO Global Action Program on Education for Sustainable Development.
WU’s Sustainability Challenge course, held by the Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development at WU, received an award in the category “building capacities of educators and trainers .” In the area of “empowering and mobilizing youth,” the prize went to the project Sustainable Development Stories by WU’s Institute for Managing Sustainability, led by André Martinuzzi. Both initiatives have been officially integrated into the Global Action Program for Austria and are presented on the UNESCO Global Action Program Website.