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6 June 2012 |
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• Major review prize winners
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Kirsten Ainley
Coming to LSE in 2001 to do a master's degree, Kirsten Ainley intended to
stay only one year. But the academic bug bit and, following her PhD here,
she now teaches two International Relations MSc courses and co-supervises
the International
Theory Workshop for research students.
Kirsten worked in marketing for the Hurst Corporation and Unilever before
coming to LSE and believes her corporate experience is highly beneficial to
her teaching, not only
for the practical aspects of time and task management but also because of
the broad understanding she has of how and why theories are applied in the
“real world”. Her students are
given opportunities to develop similar insights: every year she takes a
group of MSc students to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to
attend hearings and see the Court in action, and she regularly brings
external speakers, such as the defence lawyer for ex-Liberian president
Charles Taylor, into classes. Similarly, on the International Theory Workshop
course, students are exposed to collaborations with other institutions and
organisations, and there is an annual colloquium organised with Aberystwyth
University – an opportunity for the best research students from both
institutions to present their work and build their professional networks.
The importance of teaching at LSE has definitely grown over the last
decade, Kirsten believes. She considers herself fortunate to be part of a
department whose staff have received several teaching prizes in recent years
and which encourages excellence and innovation. It enables her to be the
sort of teacher she wants to be. “I try and create an argumentative
atmosphere in classes...but argumentative in a positive way,” she says. “The
students are encouraged to contest ideas, not each other, and to speak and
float ideas without fear.”
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Erik Baurdoux
Erik Baurdoux joined LSE’s Department of Statistics as a lecturer in
2007, having gained his PhD in Mathematics from Utrecht University.
He is passionate about engaging students and building their confidence,
saying; “I try to convince them that there is no such thing as a stupid
question.” He finds it very rewarding when the “long view” he encourages of
the mastery of the subject pays off: “Some students come back to me in their
third year saying that, even though they found my [second year] course
difficult at first, pieces started falling into place by the end and in
their final year they are able to reap the benefits of it.” He has posted
comments like this on Moodle, so that students know it is quite normal to
feel lost at first.
Erik is delighted that teaching at LSE is taken so seriously. As the
department’s GTA co-ordinator he has a special interest in their
development: “It is great to see the training that is being offered to our
teaching assistants as they play such an important role.” He is also an
enthusiastic user
of new technology for teaching: already a big fan of Moodle’s Q&A forum and
quiz tools, he is currently an active participant in the Moodle 2 pilot, and
this summer term will be testing out a lecture capture system called Vivio
which records anything written on a whiteboard so that students can watch it
at their own pace on the Echo system.
When asked about what advice he would give to new teaching colleagues,
Erik says “think about the time when you were a student and what it was that
made certain lectures interesting and enjoyable. And never be afraid to
experiment.”
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Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo
Lucia
Garcia-Lorenzo is a lecturer in the Institute of Social Psychology (ISP) and
directs the MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology. Her PhD at LSE, on
cultural change in organisations, followed postgraduate studies at the
Universidad del Pais Vasco in Spain. It is perhaps not surprising, given
Lucia’s interest in group dynamics and teams, that what she
finds most enjoyable about teaching is engaging with her students. “I learn
with them and from them,” she says.
Lucia's aim in lectures is to generate a “blame-free space” where students
feel able to ask questions, talk to each other and contest what they hear.
The resulting conversations are often highly rewarding: students are
typically drawn from many different countries and often have direct work
experience, so they have plenty of interesting contributions to make and can
also act as helpful sounding boards for Lucia’s own research – a useful way,
she finds, of negotiating that often tricky dividing line between teaching
and research.
Lucia
has noticed a growing emphasis at LSE on the importance of good teaching to
support the learning experience, and an increasing awareness that a
student’s time at LSE is just one part of a life-long learning journey. It
is partly in response to this that her department has established an ISP
Alumni and Students network, which seeks to create mentoring-style
relationships and make the most of the important links between study and
vocational application. Asked what advice she would give to new teaching
colleagues, and remembering her first few anxiety-inducing lectures, Lucia
says, “Relax... it’s fun. Students are very generous. And they don’t bite!”
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Carsten Gerner-Beuerle
Carsten Gerner-Beuerle joined LSE’s Department of Law in 2009, having
come to the UK initially under the German Academic Exchange Service
Lectureship Programme to teach at Kings College London after his studies
in Berlin.
Carsten enjoys the way his teaching develops across any one year, thanks
to the diverse student body at LSE: “You always
encounter something new. The lectures can be the same, but the reactions are
never the same because the students’ perspectives are so different. I always
learn something from them.”
He is fortunate, too, in working in a department whose senior staff place
considerable emphasis on good teaching. Feedback is something that has been
under discussion in recent years, with teachers encouraged to think through
the right balance between detailed written responses to students’ work and
verbal interaction during office hours and other meetings, and dissertation
support for MSc students has also received considerable attention. For
Carsten, whose aim is to be an approachable teacher and one who generates an
informal, unthreatening atmosphere in classes, this is a supportive and
encouraging culture in which to work.
His own research – much of it into comparative law – is something he can
integrate quite easily into his teaching, especially to postgraduate
students: “They have a variety of legal backgrounds themselves, which makes
it an ideal
environment for learning from each other and strengthening my research.”
Above all, he recommends treating students with respect. Asked for one piece
of advice he would give to new teaching colleagues, he says, “take the
students seriously. They appreciate it.”
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Elliott Green
Elliott Green came to LSE from Princeton in 1999 to do postgraduate
study in the European Institute. He has been teaching here since 2005
and is the convenor of the Department of International Development’s MSc
Poverty course.
A trained musician and performer, Elliott is fortunate in never having
suffered from teaching nerves! He prepares for lectures in the same way he
would for performances, considering the pace and flow of content, making
sure his audience is engaged and creating space for responses. But he likes
to think of his lectures as “interactive performances”: questions to
students are built in half-way through and at the end, and a variety of
stimuli are used to illustrate ideas – a clip from The Life of Brian
to make a point about colonialism, or photographs of people queuing up to
vote in Afghanistan, Egypt and Kenya to discuss the relationship between
poverty and democracy. In addition, he actively introduces his course
readings during
lectures in such a way that students are helped to understand how they
should read and what they should be striving to get out of their readings.
Elliott is optimistic about the teaching culture at LSE. “I think people
really do care,” he says. “And interestingly, the ones who care most about
their research are often the best teachers.” His own research – currently on
the political consequences of urbanisation in Africa – is something he
enjoys teaching about simply because it’s the material he
knows best. If the students respond enthusiastically he reviews course
topics and considers making changes to reflect new areas of interest.
Positive feedback from students is the thing that gives Elliott most
pride in his teaching: “When you hear your course described as ‘the best
I’ve ever taken’, that really makes all the work worthwhile.”
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Kate Meagher
Kate Meagher’s arrival at the Department of International Development
in 2008 followed studies at Toronto, Sussex and
Oxford, and teaching experience in Botswana, Toronto, Nigeria and
Oxford, at secondary school, university and adult ESL levels. Her
approach to teaching is essentially one of encouraging critical skills:
“I try to generate an atmosphere of inquiry... to get the students to
challenge not just the materials they’re encountering but also their own
beliefs
and assumptions.”
To achieve this, Kate gives careful consideration to the way
she herself communicates, constantly trying out new, interesting and vibrant
ways of engaging her students. On a departmental “methods” course, for
instance, students working in small groups were asked to take photographs in
response to a research question and to explain their photographic answer;
they were then asked to discuss the outcome and select only two photographs
as their group submission. Each group’s work was subsequently uploaded to
Moodle and formed part of a “Photovoice” lecture that Kate delivered.
“LSE is good at prodding people to be innovative about their teaching,”
Kate says, though she has also encountered some mixed messages about the
importance of teaching and is concerned that the coming REF exercise may
frustrate the development of “good teaching” even further. “Universities
thrive when they let all flowers bloom,” she believes. Certainly as far as
her own research is concerned, she is always looking for ways in which it
can benefit her teaching and vice versa: “The wide-angle teaching required
on my courses at LSE compared with the fine grain of my research sometimes
makes it difficult to combine the two, but I’m finding more and more ways of
connecting them as times goes on.”
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Svetozar Rajak
Having completed his first degree in Belgrade, Svetozar Rajak had to
wait over a decade to fulfil his plan of coming to
LSE to pursue postgraduate studies, saying “the collapse of Yugoslavia
and the ensuing wars forced me to put the well-being of my family first.
I was the only one who, in the difficult
circumstances, could provide for them.” And so it was that 2004 became
the year that Svetozar acquired his PhD in the Department of
International History and 2007 the year that he became a lecturer in the
same department.
Sometimes people talk of a “tension” between teaching and research, but
for Svetozar this is a positive thing. “Very often, it is thanks to the
students that I am able to discard irrelevant offshoots in my research and
add clarity to my interpretations and arguments” he says. He manages this by
promoting a research-based approach to learning among the students
themselves, and by creating a challenging and inspirational atmosphere in
classes, both of which in turn give the students the confidence to express
opinions and challenge ideas. He is delighted when ex-students tell him that
some of his classes have changed them and made them more eager to learn.
LSE has done much in recent years to return teaching to its rightful
place, Svetozar believes – a place that no top intellectual institution can
afford to miss: “We have to continue promoting research, but without good
teaching we will lose our competitiveness and global appeal.” It’s not
necessarily an easy thing to achieve but one that reaps benefits for
everyone: “Teaching is and should be demanding. It requires the best in each
of us.”
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Grégoire Webber
When asked what he finds most enjoyable about teaching, Grégoire Webber
answers “The challenge of getting the students to understand why
questions are posed and why they’re often still not answered.”
A lecturer in the Department of Law since 2009, Grégoire came to LSE via
McGill and Oxford universities and a stint in the Privy Council Office
of the Canadian Civil Service. He teaches on what he describes as
“Where’s the law?” courses – a first year course in public law and a
third year one in jurisprudence – that students tend to find hard
initially but often end up enjoying.
“The jurisprudence course especially gives the students an insight into
why the field of study is ‘set up’ as it is, which engages them with the
discipline in a meaningful way.” Grégoire’s approach to teaching is
based on several key ideas: an understanding that there is no one right
way of teaching all the time (he learned this during his first year
here, when he attended every jurisprudence lecture taught by
colleagues), an appreciation of traditional methods such as encouraging
close readings of texts (he is affectionately described by a
professorial colleague as “the youngest old fogey I know”) and what
might be called “quiet innovation”, such as getting his jurisprudence
students in their first class to write on a record
card their answer to the question “What is law?” and then revisiting
those answers a term later and sharing what they have learned.
Grégoire
believes that students at LSE expect and need to be
challenged. “If you set the bar high enough, most students
will strive to reach it... they’re not here just to go through the
motions. A law degree from LSE means something.”
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• Direct view
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Professor
Janet Hartley, pro-director for teaching and learning
It was a great pleasure and an honour to
have awarded LSE's teaching prizes at this year's LSE Teaching Day. The
prizes demonstrate the commitment made by
teachers at all levels to making sure our students have a first-rate
intellectual experience during their time at the School.
Prize winners include graduate teaching assistants and young lecturers
who have passed their major review this year, to established and senior
staff. Some have been nominated by their own students, others have been
awarded prizes on the basis of their teaching scores and departmental
support. The teaching covers a range of subject areas taught in the School,
and a range of courses from first year undergraduate courses to specialised
masters' courses.
This is the fifth (and final) year in which I have chaired the
group which looks at nominations for prizes at major review. I can say frankly
that we have always been impressed with the quality of submissions, but this
year was particularly strong and demonstrated a real commitment to
innovation and simply to delivering first-rate teaching across a whole range
of courses and levels. I am acutely aware that there are many other
pressures on young lecturers at this point in their career, so this
commitment is particularly commendable. The quality of teaching by some of
our graduate teaching assistants is also outstanding - and we have to
remember that most of the GTAs are also working hard to complete their PhDs.
We also have some excellent teachers, of all ages, among more senior staff!
The prize winners featured here use very different methods in their
teaching, but what they share is that they are all outstanding teachers and
we are rightly proud of them and congratulate them. In this newsletter some
of these teachers share their ideas and sources of inspiration for their
teaching - we hope that they will inspire others.
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• Teaching excellence awards
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Every year the LSE Students' Union invites students to nominate the
teachers who have inspired them. The quality and breadth of this year's
applications - over 60 teachers were nominated by their students - means
that the five winners are to be especially commended.
The
five winners are:
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Helen Addison, Government
Helen is a popular and passionate teacher. Students love spending time in
her classes, feel that the learning process is shared and say that her
preparation for each class has served to inspire their interests beyond the
course content.
Students said:
"Her ability to include everyone in a class makes you feel like you are
being taught in a one-on-one environment, which is a real breath of fresh
air."
"The way she highlights the limitations and strengths of what we do goes
beyond what professors teach us in the lectures."
"She displayed a genuine sincerity to want to help her students and to
enrich their learning process."
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Savita Bailur, Information Systems
Savita
uses new media and real life examples to illustrate technology's influence
on society. She actively seeks out student feedback and changes course
content and design throughout the year to make it suit the learning needs of
the students she teachers.
Students said: "She is friendly and relaxed with students, so people do not
hesitate asking for help when needed. We feel respect for her because that
is how she always treats us."
"She
knows how to involve everyone in the class - she actively makes sure that
everyone gets an opportunity to speak, and no-one is left behind."
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Stefano Cascino, Accounting
From his very first lecture
of the year, Stefano aimed to instil in
his students a belief that his passion was to see them gain an
understanding of the topics that could be connected to what is
happening in society.
Students said:
"Dr Cascino has an exceptional ability to engage with the class and pose
questions that test and strengthen our understanding."
"Dr Cascino engages with the class and
continually questions students like an interviewer. And all this happens
in a single one hour class. It's incredibly exciting!"
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Marco Pinfari, Government and International Relations
With a glowing nomination, Marco's time and energy for teaching go
beyond the seminar - offering extensive feedback on submitted work and
actively prompting students to read additional materials relevant to
their learning style and interests.
Students said: "Marco has been the best seminar teacher I have ever had."
"Teachers like him are exactly the ones we were looking for when choosing
to study at LSE."
"He has the skill to really engage us in the seminar's topic - prompting
us to think about how the issues are relevant within wider society."
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Alex Voorhoeve, Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Alex is an outstanding teacher who inspires and excites students, who
feel challenged, stretched and truly engaged when he teaches.
Students
said: "Alex's teaching forced me to challenge views that I have taken
for granted thus pushing me to think critically, and to get out of my
comfort zone."
"Alex's moral philosophy classes taught us to think from the heart:
decisions are important to make, but more important than that is to place
people, who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of public policies, at the
centre of such policymaking processes."
"No exaggeration when I say that Alex is a great teacher!"
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• Departmental class teacher awards
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These awards recognise the special contribution made by graduate teaching
assistants, teaching fellows and guest teachers to LSE's academic departments. The winners
were nominated by the departments themselves as a result of exceptional
feedback from students, lecturers and other department members.
The 2012 winners, from the departments which have nominated so far, are:
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Ali Dezyanian, Accounting
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Silvia Jordan, Accounting
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Insa Koch, Anthropology
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Nicolas Martin, Anthropology
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Andrew Sanchez, Anthropology
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Peter Sims, Economic History
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Magda Zurkowska, Economics
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Jonathan de Quidt, Economics
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Abhimanyu Gupta, Economics
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Tim Oliver, Finance
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Cristina Scherrer, Finance
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Hatty Oliver, Gender Institute
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Maria Carvalho, Geography and Environment
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Feyzi Akkoyunlu, Government
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Kate Alexander, Government
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Mogens Hobolth, Government
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Tim Vlandas, Government
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Young Cho, International Development
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Bryan Gibson, International History (Martin Abel Gonzalez Prize: 1st
place)
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Daniel Falkiner, International Relations
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Roberto Orsi, International Relations
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Luca Tardelli, International Relations
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Rafael Peñas Cruz, Language Centre
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Panos Kapotas, Law
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Sanjivi Krishnan, Law
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Desmond Fitzgerald, LSE100
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Henry Radice, LSE100
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Jessica Templeton, LSE100
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Kyle Ingram, Management (EROB)
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Savita Bailur, Management (ISIG)
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Dimitrios Karamanis, Management (MSG)
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Ahmad Abu-Khazneh, Mathematics
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Ioannis Kouletsis, Mathematics
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Georgios Zouros, Mathematics
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Sarah Broughton-Micova, Media and Communications
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Monica Gerber, Methodology Institute
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Christopher Blunt, Philosophy
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Christopher Tennant, Social Psychology
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Jesse Potter, Sociology
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Mai Hafez, Statistics
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And the runners up are...
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John Barrdear,
Economics
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Thomas Carr,
Economics
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Igor Cesarec,Economics
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Katarzyna Grabowska,
Economics
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Fadi Hassan,
Economics
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Felix Koenig, Economics
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Alexander Lembcke,
Economics
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Luis Martinez,
Economics
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Revi Panidha,
Economics
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Mazhar Waseem,
Economics
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Daniel Kilburn,
Geography and Environment
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Thomas Smith,
Geography and Environment
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Christopher Brennan (Martin Abel Gonzalez Prize: joint 2nd place),
International History
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Daniel Strieff (Martin Abel Gonzalez Prize: joint 2nd place),
International History
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Vlad Glăveanu,
LSE100
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Victoria Redclift,
LSE100
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Daiana Beitler,
Sociology
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Kristina Fuentes,
Sociology
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Peter Manning,
Sociology
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• 60
second interview
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• with...Professor Paul Kelly
I am professor of political theory, head of the Department of Government and, in August, I will take over from Janet Hartley as pro-director for teaching and learning. I studied Philosophy at the University of York and did my PhD at LSE and UCL in the mid 1980s. I have been a visiting research fellow at the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Wales, Swansea, before returning to LSE in 1995. I have taught at all levels at LSE, including supervising 13 PhDs to completion as well as lecturing to one of the large introductory first year courses in the Government Department and teaching on the International Programme and the LSE Summer School.
What advice would you give to
a new academic?
Take teaching seriously. Our best
students are amongst the very best
anywhere and engagement with them
can be one of the most rewarding
experiences of an academic career.
Prepare well before a class or
lecture. If you are lecturing always
bring water and a cough sweet, and
make sure you understand the AV
system!
What do you think makes for a
good teacher?
You need to be passionate about
your subject and want to communicate
it to others. Anyone who is
passionate about their research and
subject area should be able to learn
to be a competent teacher, but more
importantly they should want to be
an academic teacher. If you are not
passionate about your subject and
communicating it to bright young
people then there are probably
easier ways of making a living. The
best teachers I ever had were often
not particularly showy or dynamic
but they conveyed a seriousness
about what went on in the classroom
that was palpable and memorable –
one even chain smoked throughout one
particular seminar, but that would
not be allowed anymore.
What was the best kind of
feedback you ever had as a student?
Positive. I also benefited from
being taught in very small classes
(two to five) in which feedback and
teaching were integrated. Written
comments were in long hand and not
always easy to read, but oral and
thoughtful feedback was given in
class as one went along.
What's the best place to study
at LSE?
I find silence distracting so
quite like the library as I find the
background noise aids concentration,
but I appreciate that not everyone
feels that way. I cannot understand
how students can study in the
cafeteria around the School or in
Starbucks but that might be an
‘age-thing’.
Where do you do your best
thinking?
In or just after a successful
MSc class. When teaching goes well
on a topic on which I am writing
then the experience is often far
more valuable than presenting at an
academic conference. That said, I
have never tried thinking whilst
living in a villa over-looking the
Aegean, but then I have never tried
thinking on the top of a mountain or
in the heart of a jungle. I will
stick with MSc seminar for my
proper answer. |
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 LSE
Teaching Day
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Many of the winners of the teaching prizes received their awards at a special celebration after
Teaching Day on 22 May
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• Notices
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• Events
for new academics and GTAs
LSE's Teaching and Learning Centre will be running its
New Academic Induction Programme and
Being a GTA at LSE from the start of the 2012-13 academic year.
All academics new to teaching and/or LSE and all prospective GTAs are
encouraged to attend. More information can be found via the links or call
020 7955 6624.
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• Publications
for teachers and students
Download notes of guidance on various aspects of feedback, access
online handbooks for departmental tutors, academic advisers and GTAs,
and see our publications for students ... all at
LSE Teaching and Learning Centre Publications
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