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2015-16 Teaching Excellence Award recipients (from left) Wendy Roy, Nathaniel Osgood and Joe Garcea

Teaching Excellence Award Winners Announced

Nathaniel Osgood (Computer Science), Joe Garcea (Political Studies) and Wendy Roy (English) are the winners of the 2015-16 College of Arts & Science Teaching Excellence Awards

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Nathaniel Osgood (Computer Science), Joe Garcea (Political Studies) and Wendy Roy (English) are the winners of the 2015-16 College of Arts & Science Teaching Excellence Awards.

Nathaniel Osgood

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Nathaniel Osgood, a faculty member in computer science, is the Teaching Excellence Award winner in the science category.

Osgood's research is focused on enhancing decision making in health and health care by using cross-linked simulation, mobile technology and machine learning tools to inform understanding of population health trends and health policy tradeoffs.

In teaching, Dr. Osgood uses an adaptive style that draws heavily on learning from close interactions with individual students and teams with provision of brief take-home exercises and videos to help surface student confusions and challenges. In teaching software engineering, he heavily emphasizes to students the importance of pairing a high standard of quality and circumspection in their work with a willingness to experiment and a vigilence in quickly recognizing, correcting and working to learn from mistakes.

“My teaching practice is heavily shaped by the desire to better understand and speak to students’ current understanding and challenges by confronting them with concrete challenges, seeking to help alert them to both opportunities but risks that they need to navigate, and to encourage honest reflection on mistakes as part of a commitment to ongoing improvement.”  

Joe Garcea

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Joe Garcea, associate professor of Political Studies, is the Teaching Excellence Award winner for the social sciences.

Garcea’s research focuses on immigration, multiculturalism and citizenship policies; municipal governance and reforms; multi-level governance; and Indian urban reserves.

Garcea says four principal objectives guide his teaching efforts: to enthuse students to be proactive learners; to engage students in thinking in an informed manner about governance, public policy and public management in an increasingly globalized and hybridized world; to enlighten students on the theoretical, conceptual and substantive components of the courses; and to enable students in becoming both autonomous and effective learners and also informed, engaged and ethical citizens by the time they graduate.

“The most rewarding aspect of teaching is witnessing the intellectual and personal development of students, and particularly those who manage to develop despite significant challenges they encounter along the way,” he says.

Wendy Roy

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Wendy Roy, associate professor in the Department of English, receives the Teaching Excellence Award for the humanities and fine arts.

Roy researches issues of gender and culture in Canadian women’s fiction and travel writing. Her current project examines the cultural and social implications of continuing stories by early 20th-century Canadian women writers.

Roy considers classroom work a collaboration between students and instructors. She likens the experience to a well-executed social dance in which students are guided to learn basic skills and techniques and then are encouraged to improvise on those basics, create their own works, and find new partners.

“I sometimes begin or end courses with a discussion of Don McKay’s poem ‘To Danceland,’ which describes driving to the beautiful old dance hall at Manitou Beach, Saskatchewan,” Roy says. “Thinking of teaching as like dancing brings the same sense of collaborative accomplishment to classroom experiences as does a beautifully executed dance. Dancing, like learning, requires flexibility, strength, grace, trust, and creativity. Both are collaborative efforts, and for both improvisation is not just possible but desirable.”

Roy previously won the inaugural Learning Communities teaching award in 2010.


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