Four exceptional faculty members will be presented with teaching awards during York University’s Spring Convocation ceremonies.
The recipients have demonstrated exceptional and innovative teaching methods will be honoured with the annual President’s University-Wide Teaching Awards.
Award recipients were selected by the Senate Committee on Awards for their significant contribution to enhancing the quality of learning for York students.
“These recipients exemplify the qualities of teaching excellence and innovation that have established York as a leader in 21st-century postsecondary education,” said York University President and Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri. “On behalf of the University, I congratulate them on this achievement, and thank them for their commitment to enhancing student learning at York.”
Each award winner will receive $3,000 and will have their names engraved on the President’s University-Wide Teaching Awards plaque in Vari Hall.
Andrea Davis
Professor Andrea Davis is chair of the Department of Humanities in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. Davis is the recipient of the President’s University-Wide Teaching Award in the Full-Time Senior Faculty category.
She is also the 2012 recipient of the Ian Greene Award for teaching excellence and former interim director of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC). Her nominators describe her as a gifted and dedicated educator who commands great respect and admiration. “Dr. Andrea Davis is the epitome of an educator who works for the sake of teaching, and not vice versa. Her definition of teaching, one that consists of humility, passion, and altruism, becomes instantly transparent to all students for whom she serves as an educator, mentor, and model of black female professionalism,” writes one nominator.
“Professor Davis has contributed significantly to developing an innovative curriculum at York. She has mounted new courses in Black Literature and Black Women’s Writing that respond to York’s diverse student body, and is currently developing a new Certificate Program in Black Canadian Studies,” writes another colleague. “As a participant on teaching committees, coordinator of an interdisciplinary program, director of a research centre and graduate diploma program and, currently, chair of humanities, she has worked for collegial consensus and led new curriculum implementation initiatives.”
The purpose of the President’s University-Wide Teaching Awards is to provide significant recognition for excellence in teaching, to encourage its pursuit, to publicize such excellence when achieved across the University and in the wider community, and to promote informed discussion of teaching and its improvement. The awards demonstrate the value York University attaches to teaching.
In addition to Davis, Sabina Mirza, Alex Czekanski and Véronique Tomaszewski were also honoured. Read more in Y-File.