Campus-Wide Award Winner: Capstone Teaching Award

03/03/2025

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.

UW–Madison employs over 2,300 teaching assistants (TAs) across a wide range of disciplines. Their contributions to the classroom, lab, and field are essential to the university's educational mission. To recognize the excellence of TAs across campus, the Graduate School, the College of Letters & Science, and the Morgridge Center sponsor these annual awards.

Volunteer judges selected awardees for four categories: early excellence, advanced achievement, capstone teaching, and community-based learning.

The  Capstone Teaching Award recognizes dissertators at the end of their graduate program with an outstanding teaching record over the course of their UW–Madison tenure. Awardees:

Tracey Bullington, Curriculum and Instruction
Tracy Carolan, Curriculum and Instruction
Danielle (Dani) Clevenger, Philosophy
Caroline Hensley, English
Jisoo Kim, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Kate Melberg, Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Madison (Madi) Renner, Kinesiology
Orion Risk, Interdisciplinary Theater Studies
Talha Sultan, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Maria Tsoy, Asian Languages and Cultures

Danielle (Dani) Clevenger

Danielle is a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy. Her research spans several subdisciplines in philosophy including philosophy of the learning sciences, philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of education, and applied ethics. She has taught many courses at UW–Madison, with her favorites including Contemporary Moral Issues, the Pocahontas Learning Community, Introduction to Philosophy, and Topics in Education: Teaching and Learning Companions.

"My students have been the best part of teaching at UW–Madison," Dani said. "They are curious, enthusiastic learners, and it has been a privilege to work alongside them in a number of ways. Watching them grow and stretch themselves is incredibly rewarding, and I am continually impressed by their dedication and achievements after leaving my class. Nothing is better than the emails and visits from former students sharing their successes. I also want to shout out my own incredible TAs, who have taught with me. A lot of my growth has come from the conversations and teaching experiments I did with them."
She noted that she has also worked with the College of Letters & Science Teaching and Learning Administration as part of the TA Training and Support Team. "Helping develop programming for my fellow teaching assistants has been a highlight of my time here," she said. "I am very grateful for all the time I have gotten to spend with this team thinking about all things teaching and learning."

For the full press release see: https://grad.wisc.edu/2025/03/03/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2024-25-campus-wide-teaching-assistant-awards/