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The winners of the UCL Education Awards (formerly Provost’s Teaching Awards) and the Student Choice Awards were announced on Monday 4 June 2018 at the Education Awards, held in the Wilkins Terrace.
While the Student Choice Awards focus on rewarding excellence in practice, as experienced by students, the UCL Education Awards recognise the work of colleagues that is less visible to students, work that has enabled excellent practice or facilitated innovation in teaching and learning.
As well as recognising the work of postgraduate students who teach, individual colleagues and teams can be nominated. Any member of staff can nominate an individual staff member or team for these awards.
Nominations were considered at the Faculty level and then put forward to the awards panel. The awards panel then identified exceptional individuals and teams to receive a Provost’s Education Award, which carries a financial reward.
The following 12 individuals and 3 teams received Provost’s Education Awards at this event.
Individual awards
Mark Lake
Senior Lecturer, UCL Institute of Archaeology
Mark has an exceptional track-record of teaching innovation and excellence, but his award centres around his leadership in curriculum development. Mark is widely cited as an exemplar of the Connected Curriculum, and his development of the module 'Archaeology in the World' has been used across UCL as a case study in research-based education and digital learning.
Within the Institute of Archaeology , colleagues note that Mark has contributed more to the sustained development of teaching than anyone else.
Geraldine Brodie
Senior Lecturer, Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS), Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII), School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS)
Geraldine has pioneered crucially important behind-the-scenes work relating to student support and the advancement of best teaching practice. She has a track record of transforming the teaching and learning environment for her students and colleagues. Of many of her achievements, Geraldine worked to convert the SELCS Writing Lab from a temporarily funded occasional individual tutorial support system for SELCS undergraduate students to a faculty-wide entity, offering a range of targeted writing workshops in addition to tutorials, and available to undergraduate and postgraduate students throughout the academic year.
Gonzalo Paz Pardo
Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, UCL Economics
Gonzalo is the only Postgraduate Teaching Assistant (PGTA) awarded in the UCL Education Awards. Economics note that the educational strategy of the department is dependent on the work of exceptionally dedicated PGTA’s, such as Gonzalo. Gonzalo’s level of carefulness, empathy and deep regard for the teaching activity in someone that is also a researcher in training, and a very good one at that, makes him a model for all PGTAs at UCL and well beyond.
Gonzalo is described as an outstanding teaching, a dependable and supportive guide for junior staff and an invaluable contributor.
Christian Schuster
Lecturer, Political Science
Christian is being awarded for his outstanding efforts to link teaching to the world of practice. As part of his course teaching and in his role as Head of Teaching, Christian has pushed the frontier on connecting the department’s public policy teaching with the policy workplace. He has established links with clients such as Lambeth Council, as well as numerous guest speakers from the policy world, which directly link to a week’s classroom teaching to place UCL ahead of competitors.
David Walker
Senior Lecturer, Medical Sciences
David has been awarded for his enormous contribution to education at UCL and beyond. David set up a pioneering distance learning MSc programme within the division of Medical Sciences that brings together a Faculty of more than 60 leading International experts and a group of UCL Education colleagues. Together they have grown the portfolio of Perioperative Medicine learning to 129 countries across the world and more than 8,000 students.
David excels in many areas and has also recently achieved Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Rachel Rees
Principal Teaching Fellow, Department of Language and Cognition, Psychology & Language Sciences
Rachel has been awarded for her consistent display of leadership and innovation. Described as an “inspirational leader of students and staff, innovator of educational practice, with a real passion for quality in education.”
Rachel has an exemplary track record of outstanding educational leadership of both staff and students, together with innovations in education that show impacted not only at course level, but across UCL and, increasingly, nationally.
Lynsie Chew
Senior Teaching Fellow, School of Management
Lynsie is being awarded for her passion and abilities in education and scholarship, where she consistently enriches both face to face and online learning experiences. Amongst other achievements, Lynsie created and managed a UK national award winning business simulation, Icarus which receives extensive national IT and learning related press and social media coverage.
Elisabete Cidre
Principal Teaching Fellow, Bartlett School of Planning
Elisabete has been instrumental in driving the undergraduate offer of the Bartlett School of Planning forward, completely reshaping and improving all aspects of content and delivery. She is continually improving and seeks out opportunities for innovation, introducing new ways of teaching and helping the students get the most from their time at UCL.
Elisabete is described by her colleagues as “inspired by a student-led ethos that listens to their needs and aspirations to foster an enhanced student experience."
Priti Parikh
Senior Lecturer, Department of Civil, Environmetal & Geomatic Engineering
Priti has made a ground breaking contribution to engineering and development teaching in her department and as such a contribution to the student experience in the Engineering. Priti facilitated over 100 students to engage with international organisations through volunteer placements at UCL and has forged a partnership with Royal Academy of Engineers which will now see students working closely with entrepreneurs in Africa on funded placements.
Her passion for education is noted by both colleagues and students and she was recently selected to be part of the exhibition profiles 24 women from across UCL who inspire those around them. She is described as "changing the world using engineering".
Jane Rendell
Professor, The Bartlett School of Architecture
Jane has been awarded for her long-term work on ethics in built environment teaching, research and professional practice and her department believes she is a real star! Jane’s pioneering ethical inquiry inspires reflexive, supportive, creative education of the future built environment practitioners and it is precisely this sort of unsung, but vital work that merits recognition with a UCL Education Award.
Tim Beasley-Murray
Senior Lecturer, Office Vice Provost (Education & Student Affairs) and School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Tim is being awarded for his outstanding work and leadership on the Global Citizenship Programme. From 2013 to 2017, the programme has grown from a pilot involving 100 students to seeing 800 students each year, a true highlight of the UCL academic year. Tim is now leading a second key project relating to UCL’s Education Strategy, the Introductory Programme. Tim’s enthusiasm and intellectual rigour have contributed hugely to the success of these innovative programmes.
Lizzie Vinton
Assessment Regulations and Governance Manager, Academic Services
Since Joining UCL in 2015, Lizzie has led a project to reform UCL’s disparate academic regulations into a single, clear set of regulations which are easy to navigate and fair for students. Thanks to Lizzie, UCL now has in place a regulatory regime that is unified and an easily accessible Academic Manual with everything in one place, clear and precise regulatory language. UCL’s now vastly improved Extenuating Circumstances (EC) policy is worth singling out as a highlight. Lizzie’s work is recognised nationally and it is clear that she has bought about a transformation to the student experience.
Team awards
UCL Public International Law Pro Bono Project
Kimberley Trapp, Alex Mills, Luis Viveros, Chris O'Meara, Ed Robinson and Niko Pavlopoulos, Academics, students and research participants, Laws.
Established to provide LLM and PhD students the opportunity to work, individually and collaboratively and to make a positive contribution to the world, the UCL Public International Law Pro Bono Project is being awarded for its engagement in cutting edge legal research.
The project, which offers advice to assist leading international organisations in addressing some of the world’s most pressing and difficult challenges has proven exceedingly successful in a short period of time. The impact and value to the students and staff involved, and also to external stakeholders, has exceeded expectations and truly embodies UCL’s ethos of London’s global university.
Centre for Teaching and Learning in Economics
Awarded for their efforts to encourage cultural change, the Centre for Learning and Teaching in Economics was set up in 2015 to foster a greater teaching ethos and to encourage greater interaction with research-based education. The team developed a holistic approach and included Faculty, students and the professional services team, where they developed a series of initiatives and innovations to embed active research across all modules. This will be rolled out from fully from 2018/19. The Centre is truly revolutionising the way economist’s education and are educated.
BSc in Biomedical Sciences
Professor Leslie Dale, Dr Tom Hawkins, Dr Pam Houston, Dr Margaret Mayston, Dr Julie Pitcher, Mrs Nidhi Rathod, Dr Richard Tunwell, Professor Talvinder Sihra, Division of Biosciences
The team has been commended for providing a “stellar example” of teamwork required to create an exceptional interdisciplinary degree with fantastic student experience on the BSc in Biomedical Sciences. However, getting to this point wasn’t easy.
The team has done outstanding work in collaborating to create a series processes to ensure a world-class programme. This degree programme is now the flagship degree programme and has been recognised externally. The team has demonstrated excellence in a wide range of ways, including their thoughtful approach to organisation, academic integrity and responsiveness to student experience.