September 2026

How may I best help you?

Published September 16, 2026

Training

The beginning of the semester can bring a lot of stress and be overwhelming! To better help you and be available for teaching technology and application consults, starting in the Fall ’25 term I rolled out a Consult Calendar to schedule a time to consult with me which can either be in-person (in a classroom or our CTL office suite) or through Zoom.

An additional way to contact me is to email elearning@mtu.edu with as much information as possible about your issue and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!

As well, a new Introduction to Tech Teaching Tools – The Basics Canvas course has been created! This Canvas course covers the basics of Canvas and is self-enrolled; the course will eventually contain content for teaching applications supported by the CTL.

Thank you and have a great Fall ’26 semester!

– Sully

Celebrating the 2026 CFE Instructional Award Recipients

Published September 16, 2026

By Jeff Toorongian

CTL

On September 15, the Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) hosted its annual Instructional Awards Luncheon, recognizing three Michigan Tech instructors for their outstanding contributions to teaching and learning.

The 2026 CFE Instructional Award recipients are:

Holly Hassel, Professor of Humanities — Curriculum Development and Assessment Award
Tim Van Wagner, Associate Teaching Professor of Applied Computing — Innovative or Out of Class Teaching Award
Jeff Pettibone, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology and Human Factors — Large Class Teaching Award

During the luncheon, each recipient shared a brief presentation highlighting the teaching practices and contributions that led to their recognition. The presentations provided attendees an opportunity to hear directly from the awardees and learn more about their approaches to supporting student learning.

The CFE Instructional Award Series recognizes teaching contributions that may not always be captured through traditional teaching awards, including innovative teaching practices, effective instruction in large-enrollment courses, and important work in curriculum development and assessment. Recipients are selected from instructors recognized through the annual Deans’ Teaching Showcase held in the spring semester.

Congratulations to Holly, Tim, and Jeff, and thank you for sharing your work with the Michigan Tech teaching community.

Learn more about the CFE Instructional Award Series.

Elevate Your Courses with CFE Instructional Support

Published September 9, 2026

By Dan Ye

CTL

Great course design doesn’t happen by accident – it’s built intentionally. Whether you are launching a brand-new online offering, transforming a face-to-face course, or refining a hybrid model, the Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) is here to support your teaching journey.

We partner with instructors across all disciplines to create high-quality, engaging, and accessible learning experiences. To make course development clear and manageable, we guide you through a seamless three-step process.

Our 3-Step Course Development Pipeline

Step 1: Training & Qualification

Build core pedagogical skills through two online asynchronous badge courses:

Badge 1: Foundations of Course Planning
Badge 2: Foundations of Online Course Design

Completing both badges grants official qualification to teach online courses at Michigan Tech. Ready to enroll? Sign up through the Online Teaching Training and Certification page.

Step 2: One-on-one Course Design Support

You don’t have to build your course alone. Work directly with a CFE instructional designer to map out your learning objectives, plan your assessments and learning activities, organize your Canvas modules, and streamline your multimedia tools before launch day.

Schedule a personalized consultation by emailing our team at coursedesign@mtu.edu.

Step 3: Quality Assurance & Review

Ensure your course aligns with university standards and national best practices in digital learning. Michigan Tech uses a two-tier course review system – categorized into Basic and Full reviews – to provide constructive feedback prior to delivery. Learn more about expectations, rubrics, and timelines on the Online Course Review Process page. We are also actively working to update and streamline our course review process to make it more efficient.

Design Support for All Modalities

While formal badging and quality review focus primarily on online instruction, CFE provides design support for all modalities – including face-to-face and hybrid courses.

Ready to Collaborate?

Whether you are starting from scratch or making incremental adjustments, CFE is here to lighten your administrative and pedagogical load.

Reach out to our instructional design team at coursedesign@mtu.edu today to get started or set up your initial consultation.

Developing Accessible LaTeX Documents with the CFE Template

Published September 9, 2026

By William Crowell

CTL

For our faculty who use LaTeX, accessibility can sometimes be an issue. That is why the CFE has made an Accessible LaTeX Template. It is designed to be used in Overleaf, and you can make a copy of the code and use it as the base for whatever documents you need. It contains several features that will be of use in creating accessible and screen-reader-friendly digital documents:

Headings: The headings have been restructured to make the title H1, sections H2, subsections H3, and so on.

Tags: In addition to the heading tags, the document’s preamble turns on all PDF tags necessary for making documents accessible and screen-reader-friendly.

Math: For equations, the template incorporates the latest MathML functionality for LaTeX, which makes equations natively accessible.

Tables: Tables include header rows or columns (at your discretion).

Links: the link color used is a high contrast shade of blue.

In addition, the template contains documentation which discusses the implementation of alt text for images, accessible colors, and lists.

As a side note, all staff and faculty have access to a pro account on Overleaf. To sign in, go to the Overleaf website, select “Log in”, then “Log in with SSO”, and use your MTU login credentials. This will allow you to make your own copy of the template for use on your own documents, as well as provide a stable, portable LaTeX framework.

To learn more about building accessible documents with LaTex, Overleaf published a blog on the topic called Accessible PDFs with LaTeX. It contains information about best practices for accessible documents, for those looking to incorporate them into their documents without a template.

For those who want to make their LaTeX PDFs into an accessible Canvas content page, look forward to our article on UDOIT for a way to do that at the push of a button. This, and UDOIT’s other features will be contained in a write-up featured in our September 23rd newsletter!

Month: September 2026