Making a Difference: Three Decades of Canada’s Only National Teaching Award

The 3M National Teaching Fellowship (3MNTF) has been part of the Canadian higher education landscape for the past 31 years and has grown to be a community of 328 fellows, with up to ten more being added each year. As part of the 30-year anniversary of the Fellowship, we initiated a study to understand its impacts on the higher education community by examining the effect that the Fellowship has had on individual winners, the influence that fellows have been able to exert in their institutions after being awarded the 3M Fellowship, and the influence that the 3M National Teaching Fellowship program has had nationally and internationally. To identify the various impacts of the 3MNTF, we conducted focus groups with the 2012 cohort, 3M retreat facilitators and coordinators, and the representative from 3M Canada, as well as the new fellows from the 2013 cohort. In 2014, we conducted two focus groups with senior university administrators and educational developers. In 2015, we developed and administered an online survey to faculty, administrators, educational developers, and students at a number of Canadian universities. We found that the 3M is one of the most recognizable teaching awards in Canada’s higher education landscape. The structure of the fellowship has helped to shape local and international teaching awards, while individual fellows often provide mentorship to future leaders in education.