The term "teaching excellence" is frequently used but difficult to define. In an effort to expand upon previous work to define teaching excellence, the authors analyzed 93 teaching award nomination letters of students and peer faculty from a large, land-grant university in the Mid-Atlantic United States. Content analysis identified 25 codes that were used to compare the student and faculty letters in terms of code frequency. The codes were then applied to the university's student ratings instrument to compare the alignment between commonly used questions on the instrument and the spontaneously generated codes from the student and faculty letters. Results showed that students and faculty frequently use the same criteria to evaluate excellent teaching.