“Teaching is a joyful dialogue.” Diana Austin practices her motto with enviable intensity. “Challenge,” “enjoyment,” “delight,” and “rigour”—terms her students persistently use to characterize her classes—balance the head and the heart.

A young TA took Diana ’s teaching apprentice program: “I learned more in one year with Dr. Austin than I did in four years on my own.” When classrooms needed painting, Diana Austin persuaded the painters to put away their institutional green and try William Blake sketches or medieval ornamentation.

Diana engages her students, despite her disabling MS. They soon forget about physical limitations. Life, Diana says, is about choices, whatever the circumstances. Diana chooses to keep teaching. She hopes they will choose to keep actively learning. Students respond warmly to this invitation. As one anonymous, undergraduate enthusiast wrote on a course evaluation, all they ask in return is for Diana to “keep up being amazing.”

A photograph reveals two faces: in the foreground, poor Yorick’s skull; to one side, just off the frame, Lisa’s face. Both grin at us enigmatically.

Lisa’s teaching philosophy is to “get [her]self out of the way,” to stay out of the frame. When students were “caught in a bucket line of information, not knowing where the fire [was] or where the water came from,” Lisa Dickson set out to find the fire and show them the water: “It is not about my teaching but about students’ learning.” She developed expertise in Active Learning, Curriculum Development, and Learning Outcomes. Why? Because “I am convinced that when students and teachers meet in the classroom, we are participating in something profound, meaningful, and world-changing.”

Learned, witty, thoughtful, evolving, Lisa inspires her students and colleagues by standing aside, so they can find “wonder . . . that instant of suspension and transition between who we were and who we will be.” Students have the last word: “I don’t think I could have taken this course with any other prof. You make me want to learn more!!” Yorick grins. Lisa Dickson just smiles.

Arne Kislenko has established and maintained not only a remarkable teaching reputation. He has also cemented an equally extraordinary reputation as an international scholar of international relations. As one student eloquently remarks, “He has this unique ability to teach in ways that establish, for us, a personal connection with the historical narrative.”

With Arne, his students make “pilgrimages” to the annual conferences of the Canadian Association of Security and Intelligence Studies. Imagine, as a student, going to such a conference, escorted by an ex-intelligence officer turned award-winning professor of history! Arne also devotes hours to personal mentoring and guidance,” a mentorship extending also to his Ryerson teaching colleagues.

Arne offers teaching seminars, workshops, and personal consultations. His pedagogical research is substantial, as is work with provincial, national, and international educational bodies. One student sees Arne Kislenko “as a model of teaching and academic perfection for our nation.” High praise. Deserved praise.

Maureen Mancuso is a trailblazer with a string of notable achievements and tireless passion, enthusiasm and commitment to learning and teaching.Her career is one of exemplary firsts, including the first woman to be appointed Provost and Vice-President at the University of Guelph. But Maureen has never been content with simply achieving status. Rather, she uses her leadership positions to advocate for educational reforms. She has continued teaching as an administrator and encourages her students to question what they are learning and why.

Her “re-imagining” of undergraduate education at Guelph has enabled first-year students to take small-group classes that span disciplines. Outside of the classroom, she is a role model and mentor. She has led and participated in numerous efforts to help ensure that education is within reach for all who aspire to attain it. Such changes are not easy to achieve. They require tenacity and selflessness—qualities Maureen possesses and uses effectively. Her dedication to improving the quality of education is truly inspiring.

“As I entered Professor Mount’s classroom, ‘Literature for Our Time,’ my first class at U of T, I did not expect to hear music. But, emanating from the dimly lit interior of the auditorium, spilling beyond the door, across the terrace, and causing sparrows and first-years’ nervous expressions alike to take flight, it was music I heard!” The music in Nick Mount’s 15- to 500-student classes enters the fabric of the lecturing itself. “Professor Mount’s lectures are songs,” songs where “everything is made literature.” “I’ve even got friends who attend the lectures out of sheer enjoyment.” “This is one of the most interesting and inspiring courses I have taken in five years, one of the best courses I’ll ever take.” Nick’s efforts to reach beyond his classrooms are relentless, counseling and inspiring colleagues on matters of teaching and learning across his campus and his country. Students applaud his teaching, and so do we.

Scott North has made radical and sometimes controversial changes in the teaching of Oncology at the University of Alberta. Most notable is the Standardized Patients model, in which actors play patient roles, helping medical students communicate with real people about one of our most terrifying diseases. The model has been widely emulated: “He has transformed our approach to educational programs in health.” It is well worth remarking how few references to “I” you will find in Scott’s teaching philosophy. His focus aims always at the dozens of “patients” and “learners” he attends and teaches. Scott North’s teaching spans gaps, “aiding people to cross their bridges” to knowledge, skills, and experience. This “always awesome” professor is described as “unrivalled” by a Canadian Forces medical officer, and Scott’s students agree: “Excellent!” “His courses are impeccably designed.” “We should have had this professor a long time ago.”

Fred Phillips shatters every stereotype about Accounting, not only through his enthusiasm and passion as a Master Teacher, but also by immersing students in the practical challenges and behaviors accountants confront as professionals. This experience plunges his students into newsmagazine-style video cases he has developed and an interactive award-winning textbook he has co-authored.

Engagement, care, and mentoring are part of his signature pedagogy. Student testimonials ring off the charts, as do 15 teaching-related awards from students, peers, his institution, and his profession. Fred has also distinguished himself by disseminating an impressive array of scholarly articles, workshops, and presentations, documenting his teaching materials, strategies, and insights to enhance student learning. His significant innovations and contributions to learning within and beyond his discipline speak to Fred’s exceptional leadership and desire to make a difference. Accounting phobia may rightfully become a thing of the past.

Leslie Reid is the University of Calgary’s first Tamaratt Professor in Geoscience, a position remarkable because it is the University’s first professorship in teaching. Anchored by the conviction “teaching should not be private,” because professors learn from students and from one another, Leslie created “Project Engage.”

She is dedicated not only to making herself a better teacher, but also her colleagues. The Engage program reaches far beyond her discipline and enhances teaching of first-year classes throughout the Faculty of Arts and Science. Leslie has received dozens of teaching awards, and her student evaluation comments illustrate why: they included so many variations on “enthusiastic” the thesaurus became red hot.

A colleague in the English Department says, “Leslie has had an extraordinary and direct effect on my own teaching.” Hers are the classes students want to be in. If Leslie Reid achieves her goals, students will want to be in classes taught by everyone at the University of Calgary.

Adam Sarty’s teaching style varies dramatically to adapt to different audiences, from first-year to graduate students, from new colleagues to established scholars, from school children to the community at large. A zealous missionary for his discipline and his profession, “Adam is the sort of faculty member Deans dream of.” He is a model of teaching excellence and educational leadership, roles that are not separated in Adam’s case, but integrated, reinforcing, and sustaining. “Few faculty, in any institution, have had such a tremendous impact in so short a period of time”. Seven major awards in ten years are testament to his teaching, leadership and community outreach.

His students express it this way: “Humourous! Enthusiastic! Knowledgeable! Amazing! Best teacher ever!” As one sign of the times, they even created a Facebook page titled, “The Dr. Adam Sarty Experience”. Over time, and in many ways, Adam Sarty has shown that he is an exceptional communicator, a gifted teacher and an excellent role model.

Billy Strean is among the first Full Professors to be promoted primarily for excellence in teaching at the University of Alberta. Billy loves the classroom. It is his canvas as a creative artist and his playground in which life lessons are learned. Billy’s courses are full of novel approaches to encouraging learning.

He has won several major teaching awards, including the Rutherford Award for Excellence and the Chancellor’s Award (Illinois). “By showing up as your authentic self and sharing yourself and your real life,” one student speaks for hundreds, “you made it easier for us to open up who we really are.” “You’re just amazing.”

Colleagues are deeply grateful, too, for Billy Strean’s dedication to campus-wide teaching enhancement: “He is always busy, but remarkably he finds time . . . to mentor all of us.” Fiercely involved with transforming departments, Billy presses every student to become a critical thinker and an exhilarated learner.

3M Speaker
Discipline of Study / Research Field: Sport/Exercise/Performance & Positive Psychology

Presentation Topic/s:

• Feel Great. Work Great. Be Great: The Exhilarated Workplace™
• Exhilarated Teaching/Exhilarated Learning
• Mindfulness in Teaching and Learning: Avoiding Commodification and Acclaiming Compassion

wstrean@ualberta.ca