Creative Teaching Award

Jillian Bohlen, an associate professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, was awarded the 2022 UGA Creative Teaching Award! ‘The Creative Teaching Awards are presented annually on behalf of the Office of Instruction to faculty who have demonstrated exceptional creativity in using either an innovative technology or pedagogy that extends learning beyond the traditional classroom or for their creative course design or implementation of subject matter that improves student learning outcomes in their courses.’ This is a tremendous achievement and is indicative of how she is reinventing how students learn at the UGA Dairy. In Bohlen’s Jersey Active Management by Students program, students get hands-on experience in the dairy business. Students select the animals from the herd, make all mating selections, consult on nutrition and perform genomic testing. Students make thoughtful decisions to improve the herd. Each semester, Bohlen and the students choose their top three priorities—for example, milk production, fat percentage, type, reproductive traits, or productive life—then pick the best bulls to represent those priorities, which has resulted in a well-rounded herd. However, this is not the only award Jillian has won this spring. She also just received the 2022 Early Career Teaching Award from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the teaching programs in Animal and Dairy Science.