Faculty Teaching Excellence Award Winners

Mark Blaauw-Hara, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream 

Mark’s teaching excellence is abundantly evident, not just from his direct instruction of students in the classroom, but also from his impact on the team of instructors at ISUP, and from his impact on the curriculum at ISUP. Mark’s student evaluations are overwhelmingly positive, and this is certainly because of his commitment to linguistic justice and inclusive pedagogies, but also because of his genuine care for his students—he just cannot hide his enthusiasm for student learning; indeed, a recurring theme in his nomination materials was “care” “care for students” and “care for student learning.”

Mark also impacts students indirectly through his leadership at ISUP as the curriculum coordinator and a member of the curriculum committee. He has been instrumental in shaping ISP100, as well as supporting ISUP instructors; he’s always willing to share teaching materials, offer any support he can to colleagues, or just offering a listening ear.

Mark has also created and co-created a number of new courses, both here are ISUP and beyond. He designed and is now teaching ISP200, a follow-up course to ISP100. He co-designed and co-taught a UTM110 course: Rhetorics of Resistance. And he designed and teaches a course on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

We are therefore happy to present Mark Blaauw-Hara with this year’s ISUP Faculty Teaching Excellence Award not just because he is an inspiring teacher, but because he is a teacher who inspires teaching excellence among all of us here at ISUP.

Sheila Batacharya, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream

The impact of Sheila’s teaching excellence is far-reaching across the UTM community. Her commitment to AODA standards and Critical Language awareness, her teaching ISP010, ISP100, UTM190 and PELS, her role in expanding the PELS program to reach 1000s of students from numerous fields across campus, and her course evaluations, these all consistently demonstrate that she is an engaging and inspiring teacher, who brings out the best in students, both in her classrooms and beyond. I am pleased to present Dr. Sheila Batacharya with the ISUP Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. 

Jonathan Vroom