WWU's Steve Ross and Kraig Pencil honored for teaching excellence

Western Washington University faculty members Steve Ross, professor and chairperson in the Department of Decision Sciences, and Kraig Pencil, senior instructor in the Department of Decision Sciences, have jointly received the 2009 Allette and Cayden Chase Franklin Excellence in Teaching Award from the University’s College of Business and Economics.

The award recognizes faculty contributions to teaching and the enhancement of student learning in business and economics. This year’s award recognizes the contributions that Ross and Pencil have made in the area of developing a 10-week experiential learning project for a database management course that is part of the Management Information Systems program.

Specifically, the learning project was developed to supplement the senior-level database course with a realistic, long-term structured project that combines the theory and practice of database development. As part of the project, teams of students work with database technologies to address some of the challenges that may be encountered during database development such as converting an existing set of data into a database, application of design standards, the development of documentation and team dynamics.

Based on student feedback and learning assessments, the experiential learning project has been refined over several years. Ross and Pencil’s work was presented at the International Association of Computer Information Systems Conference in 2008.

The $1,000 award is sponsored by WWU alumnus Chase Franklin.

For information concerning previous recipients, please visit http://cbe.wwu.edu/cie/award.asp.