Brutocao Family Foundation Award for Curriculum Innovation
The Brutocao Family Foundation Award for Curriculum Innovation recognizes faculty who have improved the quality of education at Santa Clara University through significant innovations in pedagogy or curriculum development--particularly when those innovations affect a significant number of students--and who have exhibited general excellence in teaching.
For nomination information click here.
2011 Award Winner 
Craig Stephens
Biology (Biotechnology Program and Public Health Science Program)
Craig has been instrumental in founding and directing two cross-disciplinary programs. Working in collaboration with faculty and students from both the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering, he helped initiate an integrated program that allows new possibilities for course design and student learning in cutting edge technology and science. Not satisfied with the curricular innovation of helping establish one new program, he then went on to revitalize and reinvent another. Convening groups of interested faculty and local experts for extensive consultation and dialogue over the course of many months, he developed a proposal for an updated and, again, highly collaborative program, which challenges students to do integrative work in social and natural sciences in the context of Jesuit ideals, including inviting students into solidarity with those in profound material need. Integrating biomedical sciences, social sciences, mathematics, and statistics, he helped to build a curriculum on foundations of global engagement, community service, and social justice. His colleagues describe him as a “phenomenon,” noting his extraordinary intellectual energy, insight and creativity, along with his steady generosity of spirit to both faculty colleagues and students, as he moves between his NSF-supported research lab and the administrative work of leading and supporting colleagues in public health science.
2010 Award Winner
Dan Lewis
Computer Engineering
This year’s award recipient has exhibited curricular leadership in three major initiatives. First, he created a new interdisciplinary Bachelor’s program. This program, which reaches across disciplinary, school and college boundaries to involve Computer Engineering, Communication, and Art and Art History, is attracting a growing enrollment, including a large number of women students, who remain underrepresented in engineering fields. Second, he has developed outreach programs to K-12 students to encourage them to pursue the study of computing. His innovative summer camps have reached more than 2,000 local K-12 students. To accomplish that goal, he secured about $700,000 in external grants, mostly from NSF. Third, he has led efforts to develop summer training programs for high-school computer science teachers, again with external funding and again extending opportunity beyond the University community in significant numbers. More than 200 local teachers have reinvigorated and updated their course offerings in computer science under our awardee’s guidance. For three years he has served as the campus coordinator for the Sally Ride Festival, attracting young women to science and engineering. His work in curriculum innovation and outreach exemplifies dedication to student learning and community service.
2008 Award Winner
Laura Nichols
Sociology
Laura Nichols is an excellent and creative teacher who not only has brought innovative pedagogies to her courses, but has played an important role in informing the campus community at large about the needs and contributions of first-generation college students at Santa Clara. Her research on first-generation students resulted in an edited volume of absorbing life stories by first-generation SCU students, as well as advising materials and presentations on and beyond the campus. In the classroom, she has played a major role in developing innovative experiential learning projects. Her “Hop on the Bus” project trains students in her Social Stratification class to apply the course content as participant observers. In her Applied Sociology course, students conduct projects for local community organizations, such as program evaluations, needs assessments, and the like. These projects call upon students to hone their skills in applied sociology at the same time that they help meet real community needs.
2006 Award Winner
Leilani Miller and Margaret McLean
Biology and Religious Studies
Leilani Miller and Margaret McLean are the 2006 recipients of the Brutocao Award for Curriculum Innovation. They developed an innovative course for undergraduates called “Ethical Issues in Biotechnology.” This interdisciplinary course trains students both in rigorous science and in social and ethical inquiry. Groups of students from the class have presented research posters focusing on Genetic Testing in Newborns, Golden Rice (Genetically Modified Food), and Gene Therapy to the Board of Regents and Board of Trustees. The interdisciplinarity of the course and its innovative pedagogy have deepened student understanding of scientific and ethical questions that are crucial in today’s complex world.
