Organized and funded by The Canadian Association for University Teachers of German (CAUTG) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Innovate German Award focuses on new courses, curriculum and program development, and the implementation of new teaching and learning approaches in German Studies (language, literature, theory, film, drama, media, history, politics, business, etc.).
The competition is open to members of any department or program at a Canadian university or college, as long as the content of the materials is related to German Studies. The award includes a prize of $1,000 as well as registration and a travel & accommodation bursary to attend the next annual conference of the CAUTG.
The award committee consists of the CAUTG Vice-President (Chair), one other CAUTG executive member, one DAAD representative, and one past winner of the award.
If you wish to nominate yourself or someone else, please refer to the 2021 Innovate German Call for Nominations (English and French). New Deadline: January 18, 2021.
Past winners include:
2021: Dr. Barbara Theriault (Université de Montréal) for her course “Sociologie, feuilleton, reportage,” which exposes students to immensely rich interdisciplinary linkages between Sociology, German Studies, Media Studies, and History, making German Studies material accessible to students of a cognate field, thereby highlighting its relevance to social science students.
2020: Dr. Erol Boran (University of Toronto) for his third-year German course “German Theatre Production: Preparation-Rehearsal-Staging”, an experiential and praxis-oriented course, where students take over all aspects of a German-language theatre production under his direction. Taught every two years, students study and perform a play entirely in German in front of other students and the larger German community in Toronto. They walk away from the course with increased enthusiasm for the arts and improved cultural and linguistic competencies. For more information about the course and performance, please see this article on SoGerman.
2019: A team of four professors at the University of Victoria, i.e. Drs. Dániel Péter Biró (Music), Helga Hallgrímsdóttir (Sociology), Charlotte Schallié (Germanic Studies), and Helga Thorson (Germanic Studies) for their graduate-level international and interdisciplinary course field school “Narratives of Memory, Migration, and Xenophobia in the European Union and Canada”. For further details, please see the Description of the EU Summer School and the EU Poster.
2018: Dr. James Skidmore (University of Waterloo) for his online course “German Thought and Culture – Objects”, which uses interdisciplinary innovative methodologies contextualizing student learning within larger frameworks such as material culture an engaged learning. For further details, please see the Course Syllabus.
2017: Dr. Katrina Sark (University of Victoria) for her course and course website on Gender and Media. For further details regarding the course and website, please see Katrina Sark’s article “Gender and Media: Course, Website and Research Report”, Forum Deutsch 25.1 (2017).