By Sasha Moedt (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 11, 2012
UFV’s annual teaching excellence award is open for nominations for a faculty member to be recognised for exceptional efforts and accomplishments in their teaching. UFV students, alumni, faculty and staff are eligible to nominate an instructor. The deadline for nominations is this Friday.
UFV has a large number of instructors; to find one exceptional teacher and attempt to explain why they deserve this award might be daunting for students looking to nominate their favourite instructor. But it’s intended as a way to show appreciation. The nomination process itself is quite a task – that effort alone would show a great appreciation of the nominee.
The criteria for this award is posted online, with detailed sections including mentorship, attention to student learning in the instructional environment and in coursework, respect for students, and exemplary scholarship and professionalism. These criteria are interesting to look at, applied to past recipients of the teaching excellence award.
Glen Baier, UFV philosophy instructor and 2010 recipient of the award, spoke about what it takes to capture the attention of those attending classes. “In terms of teaching, the major challenge is making the material seem important or interesting to the average student,” he said.
“I like to play off the apparent ‘strangeness’ of philosophy by presenting theories and arguments through unusual examples and weird questions. The more you can make students wonder about things, the easier it is to keep their attention”
Sven VandeWetering, psychology professor, explained that relevance is vital in teaching the material. “My principal way of [maintaining relevance] this is to tell little personal anecdotes in which the point being discussed plays a role.”
VandeWetering, who received the 2009 teaching excellence award, said that to engage a class completely he has to be“enthusiastic about the material I am teaching, and convey that enthusiasm to the students. In my experience, this is hard to fake, which means that I am fairly ineffective at engaging them with material I myself do not like.”
To engage individuals, VandeWetering mentioned how it is key “to be genuine, not be too intensely task focused (i.e. engage in a little small talk and whatnot), and try to work with the student in a spirit of inquiry; that is, I’m not the guy with all the answers, but I have more experience trying to answer psychological questions, so I can give some tips on investigating whichever question we are currently working on.”
Mentoring individuals is an important part of a teacher-student relationship. Whether a student goes to the instructor’s office hours for extra help or is enrolled in a directed studies course with the instructor, a one-on-one environment in common in a smaller school such as UFV.
But though UFV professors are teaching smaller sized classes, diversity is a component of every group. To engage and teach a group of separate individuals as a whole, and reach them effectively, is a difficult task to undertake.
“In regard to classroom activities,” Baier said. “I think it is necessary to have ready multiple ways of phrasing or framing a theory or argument. Sometimes you have to go over things in a number of different ways to ensure that you reach as many students as possible.”
Teaching a group requires conscious effort not to blend thirty different learning styles and interests. Wendy Burton, 2005 recipient of the Teaching Excellence award, discussed how different tactics can help teachers to better reach students. “I employ many, many strategies to create an inclusive learning environment. I continue to ask myself ‘Who is excluded here?’ in activities in the classroom. I choose different activities and different styles of teaching to accommodate different styles of learning. I understand very well the research on learning styles, and I incorporate as many facets of experience as possible in a lesson.”
Teaching is a complex task, and in an environment such UFV, instructors have the ability to make an impact on their students because of the class sizes, which gives them a chance for more communication between student and instructor.
Award recipients receive an award of $2500 during the annual convocation ceremony in June, which will be administered by the University in order to support the award recipient’s continuing academic development.
All regular faculty who have taught at UFV for two years and sessional instructors who have taught the cumulative equivalent of two years or more are eligible for the award. Nominations must have the consent and cooperation of the instructor, as various samples of work reflecting the criteria, past syllabi, a copy of his/her current curriculum and specific evidence of professional and scholarly activity are required.
Nomination packages should be submitted to Lisa Tassone by Friday, January 13, 2012.
