UPEI Faculty Recognized for Teaching Excellence
Three faculty members at the University of Prince Edward Island have been recognized for their outstanding performance in teaching. Dr. Rabin Bissessur, Dr. Nola Etkin, and Dr. Leigh Lamont have each received a Hessian Merit Award for Excellence in Teaching. The awards are supported through an endowment to the University by the Hessian family of Georgetown. Louise Hessian presented plaques and cheques to the recipients during a Faculty Recognition Reception held recently. The reception was jointly sponsored by the UPEI Faculty Association and the Office of the President.
Since joining UPEI in 1999, Dr. Rabin Bissessur has distinguished himself as a dynamic teacher who has developed a reputation among his students as a "chemistry maniac". Students typically remark that they really look forward to his classes. He encourages them to participate in class discussions and to ask questions. He engages students through his use of humour, and they acknowledge that the jovial classroom atmosphere helps to motivate them to learn.
Dr. Bissessur clearly possesses a passionate concern for his students. In class, he explores multiple ways of communicating essential ideas at a level that the students can understand. Outside of class, he welcomes discussions, and students frequently seek him out for help with a course-related problem or just for some practical advice. The generosity with which he gives of himself contributes directly to his students' success. As one student has remarked, "I have seen him spend upwards of four hours helping in a tutorial, not leaving if students still have questions."
Dr. Bissessur is an extremely busy (and sought-after) research supervisor. The fact that many of these students appear regularly as co-authors of scholarly papers is a testament to his mentoring abilities.
Dr. Nola Etkin has been teaching at UPEI for the last nine years, sharing her expertise in organic chemistry. She reaches and inspires students with her down-to-earth personality, and her expert handling of pedagogical strategies and tools that emphasize the process of learning itself, not simply the content. She involves students in active learning with activities and experiences that help to connect the lesson with the students' lived realities.
Dr. Etkin has been active in the scholarship of teaching, having delivered many presentations on aspects of teaching chemistry at national symposia. She has developed teaching initiatives, including new lab experiments designed to increase student understanding of concepts and procedures while also presenting a problem that is highly relevant to the students' lived experience. For example, in one lab, students ferment sugar to produce ethanol and then purify it, learning in the process the production methods used by industry to prepare alcohol.
Students appreciate the fact that Dr. Etkin makes them her priority. She inspires them to want to know more, to achieve more, and to view their discipline as connected with their culture.
Since 2002, Dr. Leigh Lamont has contributed to the teaching of second-to fourth-year DVM students at the Atlantic Veterinary College, focusing on instruction in anesthesiology. With her patient and professional demeanor, she assuages the anxieties of students who are learning in the presence of animals in pain. She supports and encourages her students to hone their problem-solving skills while challenging them to achieve high standards. She encourages them to try new procedures and to respond creatively to unusual situations, while ensuring that they develop informed opinion based on clear scientific evidence. In the process, she helps her students to make the crucial transition from classroom learners to clinical practitioners.
Dr. Lamont has been responsible for a number of pedagogical innovations, including the creation of short, narrated video demonstrations of fundamental procedures in clinical anesthesia with canine patients. Students can access these on DVD and online, allowing them to become thoroughly familiar with the details of a particular procedure before experiencing it with a live patient. Dr. Lamont's students frequently note her contagious enthusiasm that invariably infects her classes.
