The Illinois Student Senate hosted the sixth annual Teaching Excellence Award ceremony at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center on Sunday night. 

Jim Maskeri, a 2013 graduate and former student senator, started the awards in 2009 as a way for students to recognize outstanding teachers at the University. 

This year, the event recognized five individuals as Excellent Instructors. The winners were Mark Wolters, a visiting professor in the College of Business; Lisa Burgoon, a program coordinator and lecturer in the College of ACES; Ryan Hendrickson, a political science professor; Bomy Kim, an molecular and cellular biology teaching assistant; and Fiona Ngô, associate professor of Asian American studies and gender and women’s studies.

“Essentially, as the Illinois Student Senate, our job is to be the voice of the student body and one of the most important elements of education here at U of I are our professors. As the voice, we wanted to create an event to show our gratitude toward these great people,” said Illinois student senator Zach Bass, junior in Business and former Illini Media employee.  

Each year, ISS puts out an online application in which students are able to nominate any of their professors and write why they believe their professors are worthy of the award.

“In past years, we usually have received hundreds of nominations, but we have to cut it down to five individuals, which really is not easy,” said Bass, who is the chairman of the ISS Standing Committee on Academic Affairs. “We judged these individuals based off what we receive from the student body, some students told us that these individuals changed their lives.”

Student senator Rachel Heller, junior in LAS, co-headed the event with Bass and said in terms of judging the applications, they look more at quality rather than quantity. 

“What we look for is not really about how many applications a teacher may receive, but what exactly is in the application,” Heller said. “A common theme of all the winners is that they’re willing to sit down with a student at any time who is struggling, or even not struggling. They engage their students and students want to be at their class.”

In terms of gathering the applications, many student senators agreed that receiving input from a large sample of the student body has been a struggle. 

“To advertise, we pushed out emails to all student organizations and contacted the college deans’ offices. Student senate is allowed one mass email, and we included information about the award in that as well,” Maskeri said. “It has been growing and students are becoming more aware of the award. We really try to get a good sample across the student body because there is excellence everywhere (at the University).”

The evening began with appetizers and a dinner, funded by ISS. After dinner, the award recipients were introduced and given their awards on stage and gave a few words themselves. The award recipients recognized the support of the Illinois Student Senate, as well as the University students who submitted nominations.

“Without them, none of us would be here right now,” Wolters said. 

Chris can be reached at [email protected].