Campus-wide Teaching Assistant Awards
The University of Wisconsin–Madison provides over 2,400 teaching assistant (TA) opportunities to graduate students across a wide variety of disciplines. The contributions of TAs in the classroom, lab, studio, and field are essential to the university’s educational mission.
In order to recognize excellence on the part of TAs across campus, each year the Graduate School, with administrative and financial assistance from the College of Letters & Science and the Morgridge Center, sponsors awards for exceptional teaching by graduate students. These awards are open to all UW–Madison master’s and doctoral students appointed as TAs.
Award Nominations
Nominations typically open in November each year, with awards celebrated in the spring semester. For nomination details and timeline information, visit the L&S TA Awards webpage.
Award Categories
The campus-wide TA Awards recognize student excellence in four categories:
Early Excellence in Teaching
The Early Excellence in Teaching Award recognizes outstanding performance by TAs with fewer than four semesters of teaching experience.
Advanced Achievement in Teaching
The Advanced Achievement in Teaching Award recognizes TAs with four or more semester of teaching experience at UW–Madison who are not in the final year of their graduate study.
Capstone Teaching
The Capstone Teaching Award recognizes TAs with an outstanding teaching record over the course of their UW–Madison tenure. This category honors TAs who are dissertators at the end of their graduate program and planning to defend their dissertations by the end of the academic year.
Excellence in Community-Based Learning Teaching
The Excellence in Community-Based Learning Teaching Award recognizes TAs who have demonstrated outstanding instruction using a community-based learning approach.
Teaching at UW–Madison means exposure to an incredibly diverse range of students and classrooms—from small discussion sections to larger lectures—and every student I’ve encountered has shaped how I approach teaching. The breadth of the university’s resources, for both educators and students alike, makes it a genuinely rich environment to work in. I find that the variety of students I meet, each coming from different backgrounds and perspectives, continually pushes my thinking in the classroom.
I love the diversity of the people I have worked with to make these courses run smoothly as well as the expanse of material I have helped to cover. I have led discussion sections on the anatomy of the human ear to sections on how to culture environmental fungi. I feel my interaction with this incredible breadth of knowledge and people has made me a better scientist, communicator, teacher, and overall citizen.
Award winners
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UW–Madison celebrates 2025-26 Teaching Assistant Award Winners
Thirty-two exceptional graduate students have been selected as recipients of the 2025-26 Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Awards, recognizing their strengths and commitment surrounding the craft of teaching.
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Announcing the winners of the 2024-25 Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Awards
Thirty-one exceptional graduate students have been selected as recipients of the 2024-25 Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Awards, recognizing their strengths and commitment surrounding the craft of teaching.
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Graduate student teachers recognized for excellence with 2023-24 Teaching Assistant Awards
Thirty-one exceptional graduate students have been selected as recipients of the 2023-24 Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Awards, recognizing their strengths and commitment surrounding the craft of teaching.
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