Alumnae Award for Curriculum Innovation
The Alumnae of Northwestern University Award for Curriculum Innovation supports faculty innovations that enhance the undergraduate curriculum. Since its founding in 2014, this award has been turning bold ideas into new realities—redefining the boundaries of the classroom, igniting student curiosity and engagement and reimagining new possibilities for learning and teaching.
AWARD AND APPLICATION INFORMATIONPast Recipients
Please direct questions to curriculumaward@northwestern.edu.
Read about the 2025 winners in Northwestern Now.
Congratulations to the 2026 Recipients
Elizabeth Horn
Associate Professor, Theatre, School of Communication
Elizabeth Horn’s curricular innovation is an experiential-learning course in which students will explore the application of theatre-based strategies with pediatric hospital patients.
Building upon introductory courses “Storytelling” and “Creative Drama” in the Theatre for Young Audiences module, this course will deepen student understanding of the challenges and opportunities in mounting theatre-based programming designed for a target demographic in non-traditional spaces.
In addition to creating a highly participatory, multisensory play that is responsive to the needs of each child, the class will include a survey of arts-based pediatric programming in the U.S. Two students will be accepted to travel to Atlanta, Georgia, to present about the course at the 2026 National Festival and Conference for Theatre for Young Audiences/USA in May.
Elizabeth Horn joined Northwestern in 2025. She specializes in theatre for young audiences and creative drama. Her interests include personal narrative and devised theatre, applied theatre, and arts and wellness.
Xiaowei Wang
Mancosh Pathways to the Professoriate Postdoctoral Fellow in Communication Studies
Xiaowei Wang’s curricular innovation is an advanced-level undergraduate course called Computing and the Environment (C&E) that will explore the intersection of computing, environmental justice and climate.
The class will offer an understanding of AI’s social and environmental impacts by having students build a solar-powered server, allowing them to engage with the infrastructural history of AI, see how AI tools and models like large language models (LLMs) rely on publicly available training data and how Web 2.0’s vast, user-generated content is essential for LLMs.
In creating a solar-powered web server, students also will directly investigate questions of data sovereignty, ethical data practices, the electrical grid intensity of websites, universal internet protocols and standardization, hardware utilization and e-waste.
Xiaowei Wang is a Mancosh Postdoctoral Scholar in the School of Communication. Xiaowei’s multidisciplinary work over the past 15 years sits at the intersection of public art, technology and social and environmental justice.
