The MPLS Divisional Teaching Award Scheme celebrates success, and recognises and rewards excellence in innovative teaching. Awards are available to all those who teach, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and learning support staff. The Teaching Award Scheme is administered by the MPLS Divisional Office and awards are made, on merit, across the departments by a cross-departmental panel chaired by the Associate Head of Division (Academic). Further details on celebrations will be advertised in due course.
The 2022 MPLS teaching award closed in April and there were 89 nominations. All the nominees could have been worthy winners but in May the awarding panel chose the following eight nominees to receive awards.
Dr Dean Sheppard - Department of Chemistry
Dean received four student and two staff nominations which were supported by the Department of Chemistry. A measure of the esteem that Dean holds is evident in the student nominations which describe Dean as the definition of the world class education promoted on the Oxford University website. His students note Dean’s innovative teaching methods, with the preparation of video solutions to the questions set for his tutorials. Dean has had a transformative impact on the delivery of Physical Chemistry teaching in the Department of Chemistry. One of the aims of his role was to improve equality of experience for all of our undergraduate students regardless of their college. To facilitate this Dean produced centralised tutorial sheets for each of the 18 core Physical Chemistry lecture courses taken by all of the students in the first three years of their degrees.
Dr Stuart Robinson - Department of Earth Sciences
The Department of Earth Sciences nominated Stuart Robinson for an MPLS Teaching Award, for his outstanding contributions to teaching and the department throughout the pandemic and since normality has begun to return. In Trinity Term 2021, when it first became possible to return to the field, Stuart co-designed and co-led a number of day field courses for the 1st and 2nd year cohorts who had missed the most field teaching. In the Long Vacation of 2021, 2nd year students had not been able to plan their summer mapping projects as usual as well as missing a great deal of field teaching, so Stuart designed and led a course in Skye where they undertook mapping training and a shorter mapping project with additional guidance.
Professor Jeroen Bergmann – Department of Engineering Science
Jeroen received a number of student and staff nominations which were supported by the Department of Engineering Science. He has played a significant role in promoting multidisciplinary teaching for entrepreneurship within the division, with the successful implementation of a new engineering entrepreneurship and management (EEM) pathway within the Department of Engineering Science. This pathway offers students a unique opportunity to explore the business aspects of their engineering work in an integrated fashion. This programme has already led to creation of 9 (pre-) start-ups and has been supporting many students and staff within the Oxford ecosystem. Embedding hands-on education of EEM from undergraduate to postgraduate and beyond has led to new career opportunities for students as well as staff.
Dr Christopher Patrick – Department of Materials
The Department of Materials nominated Christopher for a MPLS Teaching Award. He produced a more engaging set of lectures (with much higher quality notes) than any other lecturer this year. In addition, when overseeing each of the modelling projects in Michaelmas and Hilary Term he was always available to contact for help, replying quickly and with all the information that would be useful.
Professor Melanie Rupflin – Mathematical Institute
Melanie received a student nomination which was strongly endorsed by the Mathematical Institute. Melanie has consistently received excellent student feedback from a range of courses. She pays attention whilst preparing her lecture material and with delivering classes, with positive results for students and ensuring content is clear to understand. This has required particular versatility over the last two years, with all the changes in delivery mode imposed by the pandemic. In recent years, Melanie has lectured second-year Differential Equations I (a core compulsory course for the second years), third-year Functional Analysis I, and fourth-year/MSc Fixed Point Methods for Nonlinear PDEs.
Dr Maria Christoludou – Department of Statistics
Maria received a student and a departmental nomination which were both strongly supported by the Department of Statistics. Maria has developed and delivered innovative and uniquely tailored courses in statistics for graduate students across departments and institutes of the University of Oxford. Her students appreciate that prior to any discussion of statistics, she takes a class through an anonymised data set that turns out to be the Titanic passenger list and survivor statistics by class. She invites the class to ask questions of the data set that end up being the assumptions and important considerations and limitations of the data prior to asking people to guess what the data set is and then discussing how this knowledge changes their approach to the analysis.
Dr Ellie Bath - Department of Zoology
Ellie received three student nominations which were strongly supported by the Department of Zoology. She is adept at introducing novel concepts into the tutorial using the context of pre-tutorial assignment material, making students draw their own conclusions. One of the student nominations, speaking on behalf of the Year 2 cohort, says ‘she deserves this award more than any staff member we’ve met’. All three nominations acknowledge the extremely high quality of Ellie’s teaching.
Mr Martin Hurajt – Department of Zoology
Martin received two staff nominations and a strong endorsement from the Head of Department (Zoology). Martin has performed exceptionally well in supporting the IT for the new MBiol course which has been very challenging not just because of COVID but because the department has also been rolling out their new course at the same time. He has overseen the installation of IT/AV infrastructure in the lecture theatres and other teaching spaces to ensure that the students have received the best quality service available. Martin has been exceptional in ensuring that as many lectures as possible have been recorded and made available to students.