Dena was nominated by Lori Swinney, who shared the following about her work:

"Dena Wyum has always been interested in creating engaging and well-designed learning experiences for her students. She has been working with our team at the Instructional Design Center for years, trying out new assignment ideas, integrating technology tools, and designing her courses to connect with all students. Dena was one of the first NDSU faculty to sign up for our conversion to the new Ultra Blackboard course experience. During the summer of 2024, she taught one course using Ultra and the other Original Blackboard and gathered feedback to learn more. From then on, she has been using Ultra and spreading the word on how quality course design makes a difference in student learning. Dena adds images to her course modules to engage students’ creativity, uses YuJa to personalize her course with captioned videos, and ensures her courses meet accessibility guidelines, consistently earning high accessibility scores."