Prize for Excellence in Teaching

With the “Prize for Excellence in Teaching”, the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts (StMWK) annually honors the work of the best Bavarian university instructors. It aims to create a special incentive for universities to increase their commitment to teaching and to help ensure that teaching is placed on an equal footing with research tasks. The “Prize for Excellence in Teaching” is endowed with 5,000 euros.

Selection Process

Each year, TUM proposes one lecturer from among the academic staff and professors. For this purpose, the schools are invited to develop proposals together with the students. A central jury chaired by the Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs invites the nominees to a selection interview.

TUM follows a rotation system that calls for proposals from different schools each year. Applications are invited directly. The schools are requested to submit their proposals to the TUM Center for Study and Teaching – Communications by September 15. The jury, chaired by the responsible vice president, will nominate two persons for the “Prize for Excellence in Teaching” from among the proposed candidates. The jury will invite all nominees to a personal interview in October and ask them about their teaching commitment.

Prize for Excellence in Teaching 2022 – TUM's Awardees

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Claudia Eckert (TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology), Chair of IT Security and of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC), teaches the subject area of IT security at a very high technical and didactic level and manages to engage and inspire the students. Particular emphasis is placed on a close practical and application orientation and an intensive exchange with the students, which is also reflected in excellent evaluations.

PD Dr. med Friederike Schmidt-Graf (Department of Medicine), Neurological Clinic, is dedicated to teaching Neurology with outstanding commitment, great innovation and creativity, and knows how to motivate and inspire students through collaborative work and innovative teaching formats such as the "Flipped Classroom". Furthermore, she is exceptionally committed to the continuous development and visibility of teaching and new teaching formats.

Awardees of Previous Years

Prof. Dr. Norbert Kaiser has already been awarded the "Golden Chalk" three times by the students of the Department of Physics – based on excellent evaluation results. Kaiser holds difficult lectures such as "Quantum Mechanics I" or "Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics", which are "normally a red rag for students", reports Diana Beyerlein, student representative of the physics student council. However, these were "invariably taught by him in a clear, easy-to-understand manner and with great enthusiasm. The students appreciate his approach of always linking predominantly abstract mathematical content very vividly with practical applications. During his lectures, Kaiser sticks to the classic blackboard approach, demonstrating that a good theoretical physicist only needs his head and a pen to go about his work. He nevertheless provides accompanying lecture notes adapted to the needs of the students. What is also special is his commitment outside of the lectures. The physicist's office door is open to his students from morning to night – his willingness to help and his interest in student feedback were among the factors that led to his nomination for the Prize for Good Teaching.

Prof. Jürgen Schlegel is known to students and staff of the TUM School of Medicine as a particularly creative and committed lecturer. In addition, he makes important conceptual contributions to the further development of teaching at the Department of Medicine. Some lecturers have the special gift of transferring their enthusiasm for their subject to the students. Neuropathologist Jürgen Schlegel is one of them. This is also due to the fact that he is always breaking new ground in teaching and tries to adapt teaching formats to the learning needs of the students. As early as 2007, Jürgen Schlegel launched a podcast group as part of the histopathology course. Four years later, the podcasts then became learning videos. Currently, Schlegel is developing another eLearning project: students of the higher semesters work out case-based contents from clinical everyday life and later make their results available online as learning cases for younger students. In addition to his great commitment to teaching, Schlegel contributes a great deal to the further development of medical education at the Department of Medicine in various committees and working groups – another reason for his nomination for the Prize for Good Teaching.

Prof. Jürgen Geist designs courses at the TUM School of Life Sciences in which students from a wide range of disciplines come together. He not only builds bridges between the disciplines in terms of content by repeatedly integrating references from different subject areas into his courses, but also strives to provide his students with interdisciplinary training. The biologist initiated seminars in which the focus is particularly on time-efficient and scientific work as well as on teaching presentation techniques. Geist also wants to prepare his students for the international job market and offers them a wide range of courses in English. In addition, he arranges final theses in cooperation with foreign partners. In the opposite direction, he is also committed to bringing outstanding foreign lecturers to TUM, whether in the context of guest lectureships or by organizing an international summer school. Gender and diversity aspects are of particular importance to his work. For example, he introduced flexible internship periods to improve the compatibility of family and career, promotes young women in science, provides assistance for foreign students, and strives to integrate different age groups – all of which Geist links together and demonstrates his special talent for building bridges here as well.

Christoph Meier is a research assistant at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and is not only responsible for managing the central exercise for the lecture on engineering mechanics, which is one of the most demanding courses in the bachelor's program in mechanical engineering, but also for supervising the additional courses. Meier coordinates exercises and office hours conducted by student tutors. The tutors receive guidance from Meier and also have the opportunity to continue their education in an advanced training seminar offered by ProLehre specifically for tutors. In addition, Meier ensures intensive support for his students through flexible and comprehensive office hours. However, not only the intensive support of students is an important factor of excellent teaching, but also the provision of various learning formats. In this respect, Meier offers a particularly diverse range of services: a "gap script" with additional service and supplementary boxes is designed to present the lecture material in a comprehensible manner according to the individual needs of the students – without compromising on the depth of content. Semester-accompanying e-tests on the moodle e-learning platform help them to self-monitor their own level of knowledge online. In addition, a "mid-term course" in the middle of the semester offers anyone who has lost touch the opportunity to repeat the material. At the end of the semester, students can also prepare for the final exam by taking a sample exam. Many of these measures had already been initiated by Meier's predecessor at the Chair of Computational Mechanics: "An essential prerequisite for the successful implementation of the teaching concept was the unrestricted support of the chair holder, Professor Wall, as well as all employees of the chair," says Meier.