Sean Corp, Communications Lead
Tandem, an educational technology tool developed at the Center for Academic Innovation that fosters collaborative and inclusive teamwork was awarded the Claudia Joan Alexander Trailblazer Award at a ceremony Thursday hosted by Women in Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan.
The honor was part of the Willie Hobbs Moore Awards, a ceremony held since 2013 to recognize faculty, staff, and students who demonstrate excellence in promoting equity in science, technology, engineering, and math. The Claudia Jone Alexander Trailblazer Award is given to individuals or teams for developing or implementing a program, innovation, or intervention that supports equity in STEM at U-M.
Among the award recipients were the faculty innovators at Michigan Engineering who first pitched Tandem, Laura Alford, Robin Fowler, and Stephanie Sheffield. Also receiving the award were collaborators at the center who helped build, iterate, and manage the Tandem software, including Jess Anders, Kate Barr, Caroline Carter, Kristen Greco, Ilkka Kuisma, and Dennis O’Reilly. Tandem previously won the Teaching Innovation Prize in 2020.
“It’s been an honor working with our three amazing faculty in Laura, Robin, and Stephanie on Tandem,” said Greco, creative design and user experience lead at the center. “It is a thrill to see it continue to be recognized for its impact on helping students communicate effectively and find ways of working together productively.”
“We are lucky to work with an incredibly diverse student population, and we know that everyone learns and works differently,” said Alford. “I love that Tandem gives students feedback and strategies that are specific to them and their current team situation – just like I would do if I was meeting with each student every day.”
Tandem has been integrated into 106 courses since launching in 2019, including several in Engineering, the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, College of LSA, School of Information, and the School of Kinesiology.
The awards ceremony is named in honor of Willie Hobbs Moore, the first African American woman at Michigan to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and the first African American woman in the country to earn a Ph.D. in physics.
Claudia Joan Alexander received her Ph.D. in Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences in 1993 and strongly advocated for women and minorities in STEM fields. From 2000 until her death in 2015, Alexander worked at NASA on the Rosetta mission to study and land on a comet.
