The EUSA Teaching Awards 2014–15

Edinburgh University Students’ Association has been rewarding Edinburgh staff with its special Teaching Awards, each year, since 2009.

The awards recognise the teachers, support staff and peer support leaders who make an enormously positive impact on students’ learning experiences. 

This year a student panel sifted through 3,000 nominations to select their winners, who received their awards at a student-organised ceremony in April 2015. 

Here we celebrate these staff achievements and share some of the details of what made them winners, from the transcripts of nominating students, who felt strongly enough to put into writing what a difference the staff had made to their Edinburgh experience.

Best Personal Tutor Award

Winner: Dr Alison Koslowski, School of Social & Political Science

She has taken the time to understand me and how she can best support my education and experience here at Edinburgh. Alison has confidence in me and it’s motivating me to study hard for exams. It’s incredible to feel like someone has your back here at university and I know that she will always do her absolute best to help whatever situation I find myself in.

Best Feedback Award

Winner: Dr Lynne Copson, Edinburgh Law School

She routinely gives over a page long of feedback, explaining strengths, weaknesses and ways of improving. She gives students additional opportunities for feedback with informative assessments. Her feedback has helped me achieve the highest grades I’ve ever received and helped me get the most out of this course.

Best Student Who Tutors Award

Winner: Dr Ahmad Mejbas Al-Remal, School of Engineering

He took so much of his free time to write guides on how to approach the tutorial questions and teach us the best practice, and was always willing to reply to any further queries. He was keen to participate in a revision session organised by Class Reps and was always willing to give us the broader picture – not just how to do a question but what it implies in real life.

Supporting Students’ 
Learning Award

Winner: Ms Yvonne Hodgson, 
Student Disability Service

Yvonne has been a constant companion throughout my 
university journey. She has 
helped me work through very difficult times, sometimes arising from my own health obstacles 
as a disabled student. She has 
also been there to celebrate achievements.

The Ian Campbell Award for Teaching in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Winner: Dr Emile Chabal, School of History, Classics & Archaeology

He runs extra source workshops besides our seminars, which are always so interesting, and is very proactive in ensuring we have easy access to the best resources and books for our course. He’s also trying the new – and I am told radical – approach of not having an exam at the end of the course which I like as it reflects far more of our learning.

The Award for Teaching in Veterinary Medicine

Winner: Dr Gurå Bergkvist, The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies

She shows an unprecedented level of excitement for the topics she lectures on. She has constructed videos for us as a means of review and is very friendly to talk to and approachable with any questions the student may have. She encourages respect and gives clinical examples in class that both contribute to employability in the future.

The Kendell Award for Teaching in Medicine

Winner: Professor Jamie Davies, School of Biomedical Sciences

He made the material interesting and easy to understand, whilst asking us to think about the possible theories and reminding us to exercise caution when researching or reading others’ research papers. He also went out of his way to provide extra learning materials, which are extremely helpful.

Best Learning Community

Winner: Ms Muireann Crowley, School of Literatures, Languages & Cultures

She has worked tirelessly on a multitude of brilliant projects that have brought postgraduate researchers together not just from the departments within LLC, but across the College of Humanities & Social Science. She has led many projects and she has also been heavily involved in representing postgraduate students on various committees.

Best Course Award

Winner: Dr Malcolm Craig, School of History, Classics & Archaeology (for: The Nuclear Cold War in Policy and in Public, 1945–1989)

I loved how every week was different and you never quite knew what was going to happen. For example we were asked to act as policy makers in a nuclear war simulation and write a ‘last order’ to be locked on a nuclear submarine. We could give anonymous feedback on the course and Malcolm wrote an informative weekly blog entry in which he reflected about each week’s class.

The Van Heyningen Award for Teaching in Science and Engineering

Winner: Dr Iain Murray, School of Informatics

He prepared practice exam questions (on top of past exams) and told us to submit the answers for feedback. He will always try to provide us with ways to approach complicated concepts from an intuitive perspective. He has a mid-semester course survey so we can provide anonymous feedback on how the course is going.