The 2026 Teach-a-thon concluded on February 1, 2026. View information on winners below, and watch our AI Challenges page for details about upcoming challenges.
Do you have something cool to share about the way in which you incorporated AI into your teaching? If so, you may win a prize for it!
The Center for Socially Responsible AI at Penn State is excited to announce the Teach-A-Thon, a University-wide competition celebrating innovative teaching practices in response to the rise of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI.
We invite faculty from all campuses and disciplines to share how they have thoughtfully adapted their courses to address the challenges and opportunities posed by AI technologies, be it in the form of lecture modules, classroom activities, student assignments, learning evaluation, or any other pedagogical activity related to teaching and learning. Submissions should showcase concrete changes to teaching practice, whether in course content, classroom structure, policy development, academic integrity approaches, or assessment and evaluation strategies.
2026 Teach-a-thon
The 2026 Teach-a-thon was held Wednesday, November 19, 2025, to Sunday, February 1, 2026. The challenge was open to Penn State faculty members and instructors. Collaborative submissions from teaching teams were also encouraged.
Awards
First Place ($3,000)
- Pierce Salguero, Professor of Asian History and Health Humanities, Penn State Abington. View submission.
Second Place ($2,000)
- Jacob Holster, Assistant Teaching Professor of Music Education, College of Arts and Architecture; Aaron Knochel, Associate Professor of Art Education, College of Arts and Architecture; and Priya Sharma, Associate Professor of Education (LDT), College of Education. View submission.
Third Place (Tie, $1,000 each)
- David Fusco, Associate Teaching Professor, Department of Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics, College of Information Sciences and Technology. View submission.
- Nathalia Moraes do Nascimento, Assistant Professor of Software Engineering, Penn State Great Valley. View submission.
Honorable Mentions ($500)
- Daryl Cameron, Associate Professor of Psychology, College of the Liberal Arts. View submission.
- Liz Hajek, Professor of Geosciences, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and Anastasia Piliouras, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
- Leah P. Hollis, Professor of Education, College of Education
- Yuqing Hu, Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering, College of Engineering. View submission.
- Stephanie Thomas, Assistant Teaching Professor of Advertising/Public Relations, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. View submission.
Judging Panel
Each submission was reviewed by a panel of Penn State faculty. We thank them for contributing their expertise!
- Laura Cabrera, Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Philosophy, College of Engineering
- Christine Kirchhoff, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
- Siu Ling Leung, Associate Teaching Professor of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
- Andrea Ragonese, Associate Teaching Professor of Law, Policy, and Engineering, College of Engineering
- Sarah Rajtmajer, Associate Professor, Department of Informatics and Intelligent Systems, College of Information Sciences and Technology
- Aleksandra Slavkovic, Professor of Statistics, Eberly College of Science
- Jennifer K. Wagner, Assistant Professor of Law, Policy, and Engineering and Anthropology, Penn State Law