Each year, the Office of the Provost confers the University Teaching Awards on faculty members whose dedication to teaching transforms undergraduate learning. This prestigious and highly selective honor recognizes educators who exemplify Northwestern’s priority of delivering an outstanding educational experience.
Past recipients of the University Teaching Awards have been celebrated for their profound commitment to holistic student growth. They have nurtured intellectual curiosity, creative expression and personal development—empowering students to think critically, challenge assumptions and discover their full potential. These educators have created dynamic opportunities for students to apply and deepen their understanding through hands-on and collaborative learning. Equally important, they have combined rigorous academic standards with empathy and human-centered teaching, creating educational spaces where all students can feel supported, challenged and inspired.
Scroll below to see the winners of the 2026 awards.
INFORMATION About the awardsPast Recipients
Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Professor of Instruction
Elisa Baena, Professor of Instruction in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, believes students learn most effectively “when they feel ownership over their learning” and “make personal, relevant connections with Spanish.”
Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Professor of Instruction
Connor Bain, Assistant Professor of Instruction in Computer Science, centers the idea that “teaching is learning.” Drawing on a software engineering concept called “rubber duck debugging” that asks practitioners to pretend they are explaining their code to a rubber duck, he stresses the importance of complete understanding and has been known to hand out actual rubber ducks to his students.
Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Professor of Instruction
For David O'Neill, Professor of Instruction in Biomedical Engineering, teaching is defined by a single commitment: "helping students draw out understanding from themselves rather than receiving it." He wants his students to leave not only with technical competency but a love of what engineering gives them: "tools for understanding the world that no other discipline provides in quite the same way."
Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Professor of Instruction
With every class Associate Professor of Global Health Studies Sarah Rodriguez teaches, she narrows her teaching goals to three words: compassion, context and curiosity. Each lecture, reading and assignment serves to motivate her students “to keep asking questions, and to leave classes querying the historical background of — or ethical questions raised by — a current event, medical research article, or even a TikTok.”
Alumnae of Northwestern Teaching Professor
Before each lecture in his popular course “Pirates, Guns, and Empires,” Scott Sowerby, Associate Professor of History, plays a recording of a sea shanty; he ends the quarter by singing a comic song about Oliver Cromwell. These are playful examples of the rigorous primary sources that are at the heart of his courses, according to his chair, Kevin Boyle, who describes Sowerby as “quite simply, a superb teacher.”
Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence
As Aravindan Vijayaraghavan, Associate Professor of Computer Science, has witnessed the computer science discipline “become more interdisciplinary and data-centric,” his teaching philosophy has evolved. “I enjoy creating and teaching new courses; students are also excited about taking courses that cover new scientific advances in computer science,” he says.
Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence
Professor of Molecular Biosciences Sadie Wignall’s first teaching assignment at Northwestern was Advanced Cell Biology. But after receiving tenure in 2019, she asked to switch to Introductory Cell Biology, a course with 350-400 students. Her goal was to improve this core-series class, and that is precisely what she did, in partnership with her colleague Laura Lackner.