Love Named Recipient of Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award

University of Nebraska System President Ted Carter today announced the 2023 recipients of NU’s most prestigious faculty awards for teaching, research, engagement and commercialization.

The system-wide President’s Excellence Awards honor faculty whose work has had a significant impact on students, the university and the state.

UNO professor and Governing Committee chair Betty Love, Ph.D., has been named a recipient of the Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award (OTICA). The award recognizes individual faculty members who have demonstrated meritorious and sustained records of excellence and creativity in teaching. Love has been dedicated to teaching innovation throughout her 30-plus year career at UNO.

Beginning with her early insights into the growing role of technology in learning, she obtained funding for the first high-tech classrooms at UNO. As technology advanced, she kept UNO ahead of the curve as an early developer of an asynchronous online course in mathematics, creating videos that have been viewed more than 400,000 times worldwide. As technology in the classroom became normalized, Love became a leader in the creation and implementation of classroom pedagogy, pioneering the use of methods such as flipped classrooms and inquiry-based learning. Recently she has focused on curriculum development, securing National Science Foundation funding to create new types of classes in which students learn critical mathematical reasoning skills as they create digital art or partner with local nonprofits to analyze and visualize their data. Her dedication to innovation has allowed UNO not only to keep up with an educational world that is constantly evolving, but to be a leader in it.

In 2022, Love was awarded the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award. The award was established in 1969 to recognize superior efforts, dedication, and exemplary conduct in the performance of the University’s first task, the education of its students.

"Faculty are at the heart of any great university. We’re fortunate to have some of the world’s best serving across the University of Nebraska System," Carter said. "The teaching, research and engagement that these faculty do every day has a transformational impact on students, our communities, and economic growth and well-being. I congratulate our faculty award recipients on this well-deserved honor, and thank them for all they do to change lives in Nebraska and around the world."

Award recipients are selected by a system-wide committee of faculty members and, in the case of the engagement award, community members. Recipients each receive a $10,000 stipend. They will be honored at the Aug. 17 Board of Regents meeting.

View the full recipient list