Christopher Haufler KU Core Innovation Award


The Christopher Haufler KU Core Innovation Award, funded by the Office of the Provost, honors the creative and forward-thinking work of academic departments in developing or transforming outstanding core courses, assessing the KU Core learning outcomes, and disseminating the assessments as models of excellent teaching and learning. The award comes with a monetary award to the department that may be used to advance their work on teaching, learning, and assessment. The University Core Curriculum Committee will select the award winner(s).

Nomination Process:

To nominate a course, course sequence, innovative approach, or experience for the award, develop a 2-3 page summary description of how it advances the objective of enabling students to achieve one or more KU Core learning outcomes and demonstrates how students have attained those learning outcomes. A syllabus should be submitted for any relevant course(s). Please also list all relevant teaching and assessment personnel and describe their roles in the process. Preliminary data should be included. The award may recognize an innovative and well-designed plan of demonstrating student learning and course improvement as well.

Please send all nominations to kucore@ku.edu by 5:00pm on April 8, 2024.

Selection Criteria:

  • Innovative course or experience design
  • Alignment of learning outcomes with demonstrated student learning
  • Incorporation of student engagement or active learning strategies
  • Process for documenting and sharing achievement of learning outcomes, including a feedback loop for course improvement
  • Plan for, or presentation of, quantitative data
  • Plan for, or evidence of, sharing results with faculty colleagues who teach KU Core courses meeting the same learning outcome or courses that build on foundational skills and knowledge taught in the course

Past Haufler Award Recipients

Taught by Dr. Kevin McCannon since 2017, SOC 308 demystifies how sociologists produce knowledge. The course teaches underlying skills of data collection, analysis, and collaboration for students via a research project related to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a research-intensive course, it introduces primarily non-sociology students and sociology minors to social science research and provides an innovative way to facilitate student learning 

Dr. Sarah Robins developed PHIL 150 in response to her work advising students and her awareness of the lack of Goal 2.2 courses available. Professor Robins set out to design a course focused on oral communication that emphasizes the oral and meta-cognitive skills that are not typically taught in introductory courses. Not only does the course teach students the lifeblood of philosophy – discussion, dialogue, and debate – but it exposes students to the discipline.

Journalism 302 PDF Document by Peter Bobkowski

ALPaCA Grading System PDF Document by Physics and Astronomy

Geology 121 PDF Document by Alison Olcott Marshall

Physics 211 PDF Document by Christopher Fischer