Faculty Award for Excellence in Digital Teaching Practice
Beginning in Spring 2022, the Faculty Award for Excellence in Digital Teaching Practice recognizes a colleague for their innovative use of technology for teaching and learning. Digital teaching practice takes many forms, ranging from using technology to address pressing student needs such as building community and ensuring equity, leveraging technology to advance high impact practices in face-to-face or online settings, and using existing classroom technology to expand learning beyond the physical classroom space. This faculty award honors the creativity and skillful use of technology and digital teaching practices to engage students and promote learning at either the undergraduate or graduate level and within any course modalities: in-person, hybrid, or fully online. A faculty member from one college or school is recognized each year on a rotating basis. Self, peer, or department chair nominations are made to a committee of academic administrators, instructional designers in the Office of Digital Teaching and Learning, and previous Digital Pedagogy Fellows. Nominees are asked to submit additional information describing their digital teaching practice and learning outcomes. The recipient is announced each year at the annual Faculty Excellence Celebration (formerly Deans' Symposium). Any current full-time faculty member is eligible to receive the award. Colleagues who have been nominated in the past may be re-nominated. A faculty member can only receive the award once. Awardees receive a plaque and an honorarium.
Rotation for the Faculty Award for Excellence in Digital Teaching Practice:
2024 - 2025: School of Education
Current Awardee
2024 - Elizabeth Kennedy, info sys law & ops 
Elizabeth J. Kennedy (she/her) is a Professor of Law & Social Responsibility. Before joining Loyola, she practiced corporate finance law in New York, served as labor and employment counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and worked as a union organizer for AFSCME and UNITE-HERE. Professor Kennedy's research focuses on legal strategies for advancing workplace equity and collective labor power. Her teaching interests include workers’ rights, data ethics, sustainability, and climate justice.
Past Awardees
2023 - Janine Holc, political science
Janine Holc (she/hers) is Professor in the Department of Political Science. She uses digital pedagogies to increase equity and student ownership of the learning process in her classroom. Her recent courses include International Politics, Politics of Russia, and Global Environmental Politics. Dr. Holc’s research is on the international politics of Holocaust memory, reproductive rights in Eastern Europe, and violence and labor in global contexts.
2022 - Gayle Cicero, education specialties
Dr. Cicero is a proud graduate of the School Counseling Program at Loyola University
and holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership from Northcentral University. She
returned to Loyola as a full-time faculty member in the School Counseling Program
after spending 30 years working for Anne Arundel County Public Schools in MD as a
teacher, school counselor, pupil personnel worker, school administrator, supervisor
of school counseling, and director of student services. Areas of expertise include
trauma & children, counseling supervision, leadership, and systems thinking.