The University awarded five GW professors Bender Teaching Awards Friday afternoon at the annual Faculty Senate Assembly meeting.

Ellen Costello, assistant professor of health care sciences, Tjai Nielsen, assistant professor of management, David Ramaker, professor of chemistry, Joel Teitelbaum, associate professor of health policy, Christopher Tudda, professor of history were awarded the prize, presented by Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs Don Lehman.

The Bender Teaching Awards honor undergraduate, graduate, professional-level professors and recipients of the prize are selected by a committee of faculty each spring.

“Endowed by Morton Bender and The George Washington University, each award provides a $500 prize to be used by the recipient for faculty development activities, such as travel to professional meetings or the purchase of equipment or materials to be used for teaching,” GW’s Web site said.

The award is broken down into four categories: outstanding teaching by a non-tenured, full-time faculty member, given to Nielsen, outstanding teaching by a part-time faculty member, given to Tudda, use of innovative technologies in teaching, awarded to Costello, and general teaching recognition, open to any full-time or part-time tenured or non-tenured GW faculty member, given to Ramaker and Teitelbaum.

This year was the first year since 2000 that six professors were not presented with the award.

Lehman also spoke to the general assembly, remembering his 14 years at the University and reminding faculty about “looking back while looking forward,” the title of his speech.

Recalling GW’s demographics in 1996, his first year at the University, GW has grown into a more selective university, Lehman said.

The University has to “remember our mission while knowing the economy” and “understand how individual lean in order to engage and challenge our students academically,” he added.

“I hope that GW can maintain this balance in the future as it continues to be sensitive to and successful in the higher-education marketplace,” he said.

Lehman also announced the creation of a Teaching Consortium Task Force to develop a teaching consortium to work closely with the existing Innovation Center for Teaching

“The core purpose is to create a GW teaching consortium that can serve as a catalyst for innovation and excellence in education through application of what is known about how people learn,” he said.

University President Steven Knapp also spoke to the Assembly about the Innovation Task Force, admissions, enrollment caps, the next stage of research at the University and GW’s “destiny as the largest University in the nation’s capital.”

“[We will] fulfill the dream of our founder to have a world class university of the nation’s capital,” Knapp said.