Jennifer Stratford wins 2026 Cogswell Award for Inspirational Instruction
Stratford, a teaching professor of psychology and neuroscience, is recognized for her warmth, creativity and dedication to making science accessible to every student
Jennifer Stratford, a 抖阴传媒在线 teaching professor of psychology and neuroscience, has been named the 2026 Cogswell Award for Inspirational Instruction winner.
The Cogswell Award is named in honor of and supported by a generous donation from Craig Cogswell, a three-time alumnus of CU 抖阴传媒在线. It recognizes outstanding instruction in the College of Arts and Sciences, honoring individuals for their inspirational qualities and teaching abilities.
Drawing on her past connections to the Modern Human Anatomy program, Jennifer Stratford is helping to develop accurate, detailed 3-D models of the human brain that anyone with an inexpensive 3-D printer can produce.听
Stratford earned her MS and PhD degrees at Florida State University, where she researched sex differences in how sweets and fats are detected within the tongue. She then joined the Rocky Mountain Taste and Smell Center at CU Anschutz Medical Campus as a postdoctoral fellow, eventually transitioning to a faculty position in the Modern Human Anatomy program at the CU School of Medicine, where she studied the interplay between taste and post-ingestive (gut) detection of food.听
Guided by a lifelong love of teaching, Stratford left the CU School of Medicine in 2016 to pursue a full-time teaching career at CU 抖阴传媒在线. Since joining the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, she has taught an unusually broad spectrum of courses, from large lower-division offerings such as General Psychology to advanced upper-level courses such as Clinical Neuroscience, and nearly every required class for the psychology major in between.
Her commitment to teaching also shapes her current research, which focuses on making neuroanatomy accessible to everyone. Drawing on her past connections to the Modern Human Anatomy program, Stratford is helping to develop accurate, detailed 3-D models of the human brain that anyone with an inexpensive 3-D printer can produce. While commercial brain models can cost hundreds of dollars, the models she is helping create can be made for a small fraction of that cost, making high-quality teaching tools more readily available to classrooms, students and curious learners.
In the classroom, Stratford is widely known for her kindness and enthusiasm, with a goal of making every class fun and memorable. For instance, students often comment that seeing and holding a real human brain in one of her courses is among the most memorable experiences of their college careers.
Her teaching philosophy is simple鈥攎ake learning physical. Complicated biological processes, she believes, are far easier to understand when you can act them out, and she practices what she preaches. In a single day, she might help students mount brain tissue onto glass slides, get on her hands and knees to demonstrate how anatomical terms shift between humans (who walk on two legs) and other animals (who walk on four), and then join an impromptu class dance party to act out how neurons in the brain abnormally synchronize during an epileptic episode.
Above all, Stratford鈥檚 goal is to give students the knowledge and skills they need to advocate for themselves and the people they love.
鈥淚'm honored and humbled to receive the Cogswell Award,鈥 Stratford said. 鈥淭here are so many gifted, devoted educators at CU 抖阴传媒在线 that any recognition like this is partly a matter of luck, but I hope it draws attention to the care that passionate teachers bring to their work every day. More than anything, I see this award as an acknowledgment of the important, effective work that my students and I share in the classroom."
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