What stops excellent educators from applying for Learning and Teaching Awards? Sometimes it’s lack of awareness that these awards exist or assuming that they are not eligible to apply (which tends to be especially true for casual, sessional and early career staff). Sometimes, it’s humility (I’m not good enough to nominate myself for an award), and sometimes it’s simply not having the time to fill in pages and pages of applications.

The good news is that the new Learning and Teaching Awards, recently launched by PVC L&T Professor Dominique Parrish, addresses all these concerns.

Professor Parrish started at Macquarie around the time of 2018 Learning and Teaching awards ceremony (November 2018), and wholeheartedly supported extensive consultation about the existing awards scheme and its processes. 3 surveys, multiple meetings and benchmarking later, and the vision for the new Award Scheme was born.

Categories are now:

  1. Student-nominated Award
  2. Sessional Staff Award* [Includes Casual teaching staff at MUIC and ELC]
  3. Early Career Award
  4. Teaching Excellence Award
  5. Learning Innovation Award
  6. Educational Leader Award

The new scheme will explicitly invite Sessional Staff, including teachers from MUIC and ELC, to apply for a Sessional Staff Award.

“While Sessional Staff have always been welcome to apply for the Awards, historically we have seen low numbers of such applications. Introducing a dedicated Award will hopefully see an increase in applications from sessional, MUIC and ELC staff who put their heart and soul into teaching.”

Professor Parrish

Another important change to the scheme is peer nominations, in addition to self-nominations.

“Many outstanding teachers are just too humble to apply, so if their colleagues or managers put them forward for the nominations, they may be more likely to actually take this step.”

Professor Parrish

So, if you know any great teachers who deserve an award, DO nominate them by filling in this simple form and help them take this step towards the recognition that they deserve.

The application process has been significantly simplified. Instead of a lengthy account, the new application only requires 500 or 1000 words (depending on the category).

There’s more details on the new L&T Award Scheme available.

Apply now and nominate others!

Posted by Olga Kozar

I'm a 'long-term' Mq girl. I did my PhD here and taught on different courses, ranging from 1st year to PhD students. I now work in Learning and Teaching, which I love. I have 2 young kids and a dog, and I love meeting other Mq people, so give me a shout if you'd like to talk 'learning and teaching' or would like to brainstorm together.

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