Staff commended at MAPS Faculty Education Awards 2020

Earth Sciences Department has received four Faculty teaching awards (4 out of the 6 submitted). Many congratulations to Seb Groh, Susie Rizvi, Giulia Magnarini, and the Virtual Field Courses team. Thanks to all of you for your hard work under incredibly demanding and stressful circumstances. The VFC Team (in alphabetical rather than priority order): Tim Atkinson, Paul Bown, David Dobson, Matthew Fox, Martin Homann, Wendy Kirk (Emeritus), Emma Liu, Philip Meredith, Tom Mitchell, Eric Oelkers, Kevin Pickering, Juergen Thurow and Jeremy Young.

Many congratulations to Dr Mengyan Nie and the IMD teaching operation team (i.e. Dr Mengyan Nie, Dr Dr Mojtaba Abdi-Jalebi, Dr Yohan Dallagnese, Dr Prospero Taroni Junior, Prof Kwang Leong Choy) for their awards: Teaching Award and Team Award, respectively. We are delighted and greatly appreciate the MAPS Faculty recognition of our dedication in supporting our MSc students' learning experience and well-being, especially during these extraordinary times. Working closely with the Faculty team, we continue to offer an enhanced learning experience by enriching our curriculum with the latest research advances and going the extra mile to support our students' wellbeing and career development, inspiring our students to achieve their full potential.

The performance of the IRDR Continuity Planning Team (Student Recruitment), formed in response to the Covid-19 crisis and the directive to support student recruitment, has been outstanding. The team worked together to recruit 80 new PGT students against a target of 42 - an increase of 90% when the universities faced an existential risk. Created from scratch, because of the impact of the pandemic on key staff, and led by Patrizia Duda, the core team of Sarah Jeal and Gianluca Pescaroli and supported by Katerina Stavrianaki and Joanna Faure Walker, delivered an enhanced recruitment action plan which offered constant engagement and an individualised student-centred approach.

I'm delighted to congratulate all the winners from Mathematics this year. All three have been absolutely key in making a success of our move into primarily online teaching this year. As chair of our Department Teaching Committee, Nadia Sidorova has masterminded the creation of an entirely new overarching structure from scratch. Ibrahim Bulime was the cornerstone of the practicalities of the move, ensuring all staff had working home IT systems and putting in lots of time supporting our teaching staff to get to the point of successful online delivery. David Sheard is a PhD student who was already involved in outreach before the pandemic struck. He rapidly transferred his own practice into really excellent pre-recorded videos in spring, and over the summer produced guides to help teaching staff follow suit. All three of them have made extraordinary contributions to the smooth delivery of our teaching this year and they thoroughly deserve their awards.

I am very pleased that staff from the Department of Space and Climate Physics were among those who received recognition in this year's MAPS Faculty Education Awards. Professor Sarah Matthews and Dr Ian Raper, who jointly received an Excellence Award in the Teaching category, deftly responded to requests for rapidly developing changes to our usual teaching practices, and with a positive attitude and impressive work ethic assisted the wider teaching staff in understanding and adapting to the new approaches. I'm also delighted that our Education Administration Team (Natasha Magennis, Philippa Elwell and Lizzie Hudson) received a Highly Commended Award in the Team category. The Team worked tirelessly and with a can-do attitude to successfully respond to the continuously changing landscape, while also coping on a personal and professional level with the absence through illness of our Senior Teaching Administrator who sadly passed away during the summer. I would like to thank all our staff involved in Education, who have worked and are working tremendously hard to help UCL respond successfully to the challenging circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and to maintain excellent teaching for our students, but it is particularly pleasing to see key people receiving recognition for their exceptional efforts.

As Programme Manager, Rebecca Spencer handles all aspects of the student life cycle from application to graduation, for over 400 students engaged with up to 300 modules on 45 distinct study combinations. This is a tremendous undertaking at the best of times, and the unusual circumstances of the last year brought even more challenges than usual. Rebecca handled the test with great efficiency, enthusiasm, and flair. She joined the department only one year ago, but has already shown that she is an extremely valuable member of the team. We are very lucky to have her.

In Statistical Science, very many congratulations are due to Simon Harden and Elinor Jones, for their awards in the category of “members of staff who have delivered excellent and inspirational teaching and/or have played a pivotal role in responding to the education and assessment challenges of the Covid-19 crisis”. As in other departments, many staff have gone well above and beyond the call of duty in exceptionally difficult times; but Simon and Elinor were nominated almost universally for their tireless work in organising teaching delivery and communications to students, as well as their provision of resources, training and support sessions as we adapt to a new style of teaching delivery. Our students have been incredibly positive about their learning experience this year: everyone must take their share of the credit, but it wouldn’t have been possible without the work that Simon and Elinor put in to facilitate it.