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Three of our teaching staff have been shortlisted in this year’s Edinburgh University Students Association (EUSA) Teaching Awards.
The Teaching Award celebrate the very best of teaching and support at the University of Edinburgh by providing students with an opportunity to nominate their teaching staff across a series of categories, from 'Supervisor of the Year' to 'Outstanding Course of the Year'. EUSA was the first students' association in the UK to offer student-led teaching awards, and the Awards are now in their 12th year.
In total, 86 of our staff were nominated, with many receiving multiple nominations across different categories (see the full list below). We were also delighted to have more staff nominated for the Outstanding Innovation in Digital Teaching Award than any other School in the University.
A huge thank you to all students who nominated, and congratulations to all our nominees and the following staff who were shortlisted!
Dr Francisco Garcia Garcia - Teacher of the Year (shortlisted)
Fran García is a Lecturer in Chemical Reaction Engineering. He is leading a research group working on chemical reaction engineering, which focuses on clean energy production and emission control.
Fran is passionate about teaching and communicating science. He attests that his early experience teaching science in different high schools in Spain made him understand “that each student is special and unique”.
Over his past five years working at the University of Edinburgh, Fran has been teaching Reactor Design 1, Chemical Engineering Lab 1, and Kinetics and Catalysis 3, and supervising Design Projects 4, Study Project 4, Research Project 5, Carnegie Trust Summer Projects and Careerwise Summer Projects.
What students said about Fran:
- “Dr Garcia-Garcia is very passionate about his teaching. He put a lot of efforts in helping the students, encouraging us to learn and do better. He is very approachable and very patient at explaining the theory and to a slow learner like me, I felt very blessed to have him as my lecturer.”
- “Francisco has been able to spark an interest in catalysis in me which has lead me to apply for catalysis internships. He sparked this interest by making digital course feel like you were in his classroom with his catalysis museum and made the most of the digital seminars by including people from industry which gives us all a valuable link to a company.”
- “In general, it is obvious Fran cares about teaching and simply goes far above what is expected of a lecturer, introducing new concepts beyond the course, sparking imagination and allowing ideas to be fostered even in an online environment and his willingness to help has definitively helped me remain positive throughout my three years of studying."
Speaking of his teaching role, Fran said: “I am convinced that no significant learning can occur without any significant relationship with our student. As an educator, I am very conscious of my responsibility, as a role model for my students and support for their professional and personal development. Education is the most powerful tool we can give to future generations. It will make them free, compassionate, fair, unstoppable.”
“My early experience teaching in several high schools taught me that no significant social change can occur without engaging with students at an early stage of their education. To achieve this, I organise annual visits to different high schools where I discuss some of today’s most important scientific topics such as air quality, and sustainable energy production with students, parents, and teachers from different socio-economic backgrounds.”
Dr Jeff Steynor - Support Staff of the Year (shortlisted)
Jeff has worked at the University of Edinburgh for nearly 12 years, and is currently Project Manager and Senior Experimental Officer at FASTBLADE, a state-of-the-art composite structures research facility recently co-developed by the School of Engineering and Babcock International at a site in Rosyth.
Jeff’s career began in Bermuda, where he worked in marine construction and composites manufacturing, before he embarked on a period of travelling and eventually studied for an MEng and PhD at the University of Edinburgh – during which time he founded the Engineering Society and “strived to advance the social aspects of being an engineering student”.
In addition to his current FASTBLADE role, Jeff spends many hours a week supporting our students with extracurricular activities, research and experimental work – including projects led by our student societies HYPED, Edinburgh University Formula Student and Endeavour.
What students said about Jeff:
- “Jeff is an absolute legend. He has selflessly donated hours of his free time to provide real, incredibly useful feedback to student societies like HYPED, Formula Student and Endeavour Rockets, often staying long past working hours to go through engineering drawings, health and safety assessments, technical requirement specifications and such. Simply put - these societies would not be where they are without his input […] If anyone deserves this award, it's Jeff: he's the paragon of integrity, friendliness, professionalism and kindness.”
- “Jeff encourages all of us in the student led projects to be creative and critical through engineering design to prepare us for future careers in industry.”
- “Jeff has been insanely helpful with anything that was asked of him, or even mentioned as something that the [HYPED] team is struggling with - hearing of any trouble he did not hesitate to reach out to his network to help the team. Being in the School of Engineering he aided communications and promoted improvement of processes and of management tactics that helped with the planning in this difficult year.”
Commenting on his nomination, Jeff said: “My goal over the past years working with the students is to teach them how to transfer the skills developed in their studies into tangible solutions. Being nominated has lifted my spirits and given me great joy. It has also helped me know that I have achieved my goal of helping students turn their theoretical skills into practical solutions despite the challenges presented by Covid-19.
“Reading the nominations has given me a new perspective and made me realise the profound effects that a helping hand from support staff can have on our students. I am certain that by setting a good example to our students, they too, will go on to help and support others.”
Dr Dimitri Mignard - Supervisor of the Year (shortlisted)
Dimitri has worked at the University for around 15 years, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering. His research focuses on the conversion and storage of renewable energies, as well as on adapted approaches to desalination and irrigation for low-income countries.
Dimitri teaches on our undergraduate chemical engineering degree programmes – including courses such as Environmental Issues and Chemical Engineering Design.
He also is Fifth Year Coordinator for Chemical Engineering, which he deems to have been a “particularly critical role in the current circumstances”. In addition to that, he is the Deputy Programme Director, a personal tutor and a dissertation supervisor for the MSc in Sustainable Energy Systems.
What students said about Dimitri:
- "Dimitri is an outstanding supervisor who cares about all students' wellbeing, as well as their academic and professional progression […] He is always trying to help students find ways to manage their coursework while prioritising their mental health, and created a Miro board for our year to share our tips for managing classes, job applications and thesis while working from home. He is an excellent supervisor who goes above and beyond to support not only his supervisees, but also the entire class of students.”
- “Coming from a different country to Edinburgh has been an absolutely new experience for me, the teaching method has been very different as well compared to what I am used to. [Dimitri] has been very supportive and consistent with giving me the right kind of advice I need to go through the semester, he is very quick to respond to requests and also goes the extra mile”.
- “Actively responds to feedback and always trying to make the tutorials more engaging. Great lectures with useful quizzes to assess knowledge gained from each respective lecture. Breakout rooms to encourage collaborative work on different sections. Very enthusiastic about their course.”
Reacting to his nomination, Dimitri said: “Yippee! And many thanks. I believe that supervisors, tutors and (importantly) year coordinators can greatly help with fostering our students’ development, by providing informal mentoring at every opportunity.
“We must make our students feel valued, above the background noise of course delivery and assessment. The same goes with the staff (academic and non-academic)... How do we really do justice to our many colleagues who moved mountains this year but did not get shortlisted? I’d recommend a team approach, as I proudly share a nomination for Teacher of the Year with colleague Norbert Radacsi and our outstanding tutor Allana Lewis.”
Our nominees
Chemical Engineering
Professor Stefano Brandani
Dr Michael Chen
Dr Francisco Garcia Garcia
Dr Kevin Hanley
Dr Timm Krueger
Dr Rodrigo Ledesma Aguilar
Dr Mauro Luberti
Dr Dimitri Mignard
Dr Chris Ness
Dr Daniel Oregon Mantecon
Dr Norbert Radacsi
Dr Santiago Romero-Vargas Castrillon
Dr Jennifer Skilling
Dr Ignacio Tudela-Montes
Professor Prashant Valluri
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr Athanasios Angeloudis
Dr Christopher Beckett
Professor Luke Bisby
Dr Ricky Carvel
Dr Antonis Giannopoulos
Dr Rory Hadden
Dr Zeynep Karatza
Dr Angus Law
Professor Yong Lu
Professor Jin Ooi
Dr Stefanos Papanicolopulos
Dr Tom Reynolds
Dr David Rush
Dr Simon Smith
Electronics and Electrical Engineering
Professor Tughrul Arslan
Dr Danial Chitnis
Professor Tim Drysdale
Dr Javier Escudero
Dr Istvan Gyongy
Dr Philip Hands
Professor Robert Henderson
Dr Jiabin Jia
Dr David Laurenson
Dr Chang Liu
Dr Filippo Menolascina
Dr Michael Merlin
Dr Nick Polydorides
Dr Wasiu Popoola
Dr Majid Safari
Dr Jonathan Shek
Dr Stewart Smith
Dr Adam Stokes
Professor John Thompson
Professor Ian Underwood
Dr Gary Wells
Mechanical Engineering
Dr Parvez Alam
Professor Tom Bruce
Dr Katherine Dunn
Dr Anna Garcia Teruel
Dr Livio Gibelli
Dr Wang Han
Dr Ignazio Maria Viola
Dr Francisca Martinez-Hergueta
Dr Rohit Pillai
Dr Filipe Teixeira-Dias
Dr Harry Van der Weijde
Postgraduate
Konstantinos Bantounos
Franziska BößL
Colin Anderson
Lucia Bandiera
Radu Bucurel
Ella Handley
Rutger Kok
David Kong
Mennatallah Labib
Allana Lewis
Danijela Stankovic
Filip Taneski
Samuel Thompson
Rahmat Ullah
Muhammad Waqas
Eduardo Rosales Ortega
Support staff
Dr Katherine Cameron
Laura Koo
Alasdair Christie
Elsie Dent
Dr Andy Firth
Deborah Fowlis
Iain Gold
Dr Jeffrey Steynor
Matt Vickers