Arts Faculty News

Arts Dean's Teaching Awards recipients with Prof Mark Peel and Prof Rae Frances

A ceremony was held last week at the Monash Staff Club to recognise excellence in teaching within the Arts Faculty.

Professor Mark Peel, Associate Dean (Teaching), School of Historical Studies, said the ceremony was an important acknowledgement of the outstanding efforts of many teachers within the Faculty.

“In 2007, heads of schools and undergraduate coordinators based their recommendations on a mix of qualitative and quantitative outcomes from 2006 unit evaluations and ‘local knowledge’ about people who were exemplifying good undergraduate teaching in their sections and schools,” Professor Peel said.

“As a faculty, we have often been modest — perhaps overly modest — about rewarding our teachers, in part for fear that identifying one excellent teacher might slight all the other excellent teachers.

“While I share that uncertainty, I also think we need to pay a lot more attention to the hard work that we do as teachers and the contributions that teaching makes to the wider task of academic scholarship.”

Professor Peel said the idea of nominating a “best teacher” was problematic and always difficult.

Faculty of Arts Dean's Teaching Awards recipients with Professor Mark Peel, Associate Dean (Teaching), (far left) and Professor Rae Frances

“I don’t think we can ever know who might be our best teacher. But we can know that these people (the awardees) are all very good ones, and that they are all characterised by the inventiveness they bring to their teaching,” he said.

“I also like to think that we are celebrating how they represent us to our students, and how they exemplify what our students find most valuable in their academic teachers: passion, intellectual excitement and engagement.”

The recipients of the Dean’s Teaching Awards in the Faculty of Arts for 2007 are: Kylie Baxter (Politics), Gill Bowen (Archaeology and Ancient History), Julie Bradshaw (Linguistics), Ros Furney (Philosophy), Jane Griffiths (Classical Studies), Toby Handfield (Philosophy), Robyn Heckenberg (Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies), Peter Howard (History), Christian Kull (Geography), Helen Nesadurai (International Studies, Malaysia), Priya Rangan (Geography), Thomas Reiner (Music), Michelle Small (International Studies, South Africa), Matt Tomlinson (Anthropology), Sue Tweg (Drama and Theatre Studies), Sue Yell (Communications).