2023 Provost Innovation in Teaching Award Winner

The Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award recognizes a faculty member or faculty team who has used exceptional creativity in the use of innovative approaches to promote student-centered learning. This annual award is based on the demonstrated success of the innovation, as well as evidence of impact on students, colleagues, and the potential for wider adoption. The awards given this year were in three categories: Program Category, Individual Category and Career Achievement Category.

The Office of the Provost is pleased to announce the 2023 Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award Winners:

Virtual InterProfessional Education (VIPE)

Pamela Biernacki, Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Lois Wessel, Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Elke Zschaebitz, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing

Professors Pamela Biernacki, Lois Wessel, and Elke Zschaebitz assisted with developing an interprofessional education through a consortium of five U.S. based schools that can be shared and replicated to create online, interprofessional experiences using virtual conferencing. The Virtual InterProfessional Education Program is designed to include asynchronous and synchronous modalities to develop robust online interprofessional educational experiences for students. The significance of the program is that healthcare professionals require the knowledge, skills and abilities to work collaboratively and across service delivery systems in a diverse setting and with a variety of professionals. VIPE participants include students from the fields of social work, public health, occupational and/or physical therapy, speech and language therapy, child-life, dentistry, pharmacy, law enforcement, nursing, and advanced practice nursing. The VIPE program is grounded in several learning theories, problem-based learning, and case-based learning, as well as the notion that IPE and collaborative practice lends themselves to collaborative problem solving where there is not one single correct solution, thus encouraging students to solve problems in the context of a collaborative interprofessional group. As of May 2023, the VIPE Consortium has grown into a multi-national, interprofessional collaborative including 60+ universities across 30 countries.