Several lecturers at the University of the West Indies (UWI) have been honored for their contribution to their fields in the 2022 UWI/Guardian Group Premium Teaching Awards.
In a statement UWI said that three lecturers, Dr Suzanne Burke from the Faculty of Humanities and Education; Dr Amy Deacon of the Faculty of Science and Technology; and Dr Bephyer Parey of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies were all honored at the awards ceremony in the Learning Resource Center on 22 September 2022.
UWI said the Premium Teaching Awards are part of the university’s commitment to providing a dynamic, student-centred learning environment where student learning is pursued as the primary aim of the academy and excellence in teaching is recognized and rewarded.
UWi said the biennial event has honored teaching excellence at the St. Augustine Campus since 2000.
This year’s theme was “Ready, Set, Click: Negotiating Quality in the Blended/Online Teaching and Learning Environment,” highlighting the campus’s ability to successfully engage in blended/online teaching and learning.
Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, Vice-Chancellor and Campus Director congratulated all the nominees who willingly submitted their work and themselves to independent review and feedback.
She also expressed her gratitude to the team at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CELT) who ensured the essential quality of online and blended teaching and learning approaches during the campus closure due to the Pandemic.
“As a way of addressing the continuum of teaching and learning at the UWI St. Augustine, CETL designed and implemented a series of workshops and capacity building activities to support teaching and learning in the Emergency Distance Learning environment. These activities served to foster a much-needed sense of readiness among faculty and students.”
Marcos Rehberg, Vice President – Finance, Guardian Life of the Caribbean Limited, noted that their partnership with UWI began in 2000 and the relationship is deeply rooted in the development and promotion of academic excellence, with leadership and innovation in mind.
“We can agree that quality is a value that should not be compromised, as we offer a promise to deliver, be it education or life insurance. Managing these expectations while navigating a blended environment requires a paradigm shift and agility in order to remain relevant.”
Dr LeRoy Hill, Director of CETL, spoke of “the constant pace of conversation that asks us to stop, reflect and consider especially how we go about ensuring quality teaching and learning”.
The topic, he said “Ready, set, click: Negotiating quality in the blended/online teaching and learning environment is an invitation to be ready to be resilient; resilient in the face of uncertainty or adversity”.
Featured speaker, Dr Camille Dickson-Deane, Senior Lecturer, Higher Education Learning Design, University of Technology Sydney Australia, shared her research on sociotechnical spaces in learning, teaching and performance.
The panel of independent judges included Dr Dale Roy former Executive Director, Center for Leadership in Learning, McMaster University; Professor Marc Tennant, Director and Founder, International Research Collaboration – Oral Health and Equity at the University of Western Australia, and Dr. Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Executive Director (Acting) of the Center for Learning and Teaching at Dalhousie University.
The 2022 UWI/Guardian Group Premium Teaching Awards ceremony can be viewed on the UWI St. Paul Campus YouTube channel. Augustine.
