University Professor

Michelle Craig’s work to improve and enhance learning materials in computer science has been internationally recognized. Paul Piunno’s teaching innovations have introduced undergraduate science students to interdisciplinary research.

The two ��߲ݴ�ý professors, who have devoted their careers to enhancing the student experience, have been awarded this year’s President’s Teaching Award. The award recognizes sustained excellence in teaching, research in teaching and the integration of teaching and research.

“Professors Craig and Piunno have brought great energy and creativity to their classrooms, enriching the education of our students and setting an inspiring example for other teachers,” said U of T President Meric Gertler.

“On behalf of the ��߲ݴ�ý, I congratulate both of them on their achievements and on receiving this important recognition.”

Winners of the teaching award receive an annual professional development allowance of $10,000 for five years, and are designated members of the U of T Teaching Academy for a minimum period of five years. The academy meets regularly to discuss matters relevant to teaching, offer advice to the vice-president and provost, as well as the director of Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI).

Read about last year’s winners

Craig, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of computer science, is particularly excited to begin contributing to the U of T Teaching Academy.

“It means you have an opportunity to have a bigger impact on what we do here and raise the portfolio of teaching at the university,” said Craig, who joined U of T in 1990.

Craig has been active in transforming computer science material for various audiences. She co-ordinated the cross-Canada Undergraduate Capstone Open-Source Projects program (UCOSP) to train promising software developers and the Computing for Medicine program to introduce computing to medical students. She is currently working with the National Center for Women & Information Technology to develop EngageCSEdu, a peer-reviewed online repository for teaching materials. “A place for teaching-stream faculty to publish resources,” said Craig.

She is most proud of her work in developing educational materials, leading a team that produced over 125 videos and over 200 exercises about C and Systems Programming that have been viewed thousands of times by U of T students.

She couldn’t do it alone, and said she was thankful to collaborate with many across her department.

“The thing I’m most proud of was getting a whole bunch of people to agree to work on this stuff together,” said Craig, who read on camera for each video while other faculty and students filled in as script writers, editors and videographers.

She believes strongly in producing high quality materials for her students. Collaborating on over 35 publications in computer science education, Craig also takes pride in applying scholarly rigour to her teaching methods and materials.

“Assignments and curricular materials are what makes the student experience,” said Craig, who won an Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations teaching award. Having a good relationship with students is important, she added, but “what makes the student’s experience in computer science is how well the materials guide them through the lessons and how frustrated they are when the instructions aren’t careful.

“If they can get from Step A to Step B, and actually meet the learning objectives – and it hasn’t been too painful – that’s what I want to invest in.”

Paul Piunno, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of chemical and physical sciences at U of T Mississauga, is also invested in engaging students and has done so through his team-based interdisciplinary pedagogy.

Collaborating with colleagues in the department of biology and the department of chemical and physical sciences, Piunno launched the Advanced Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory (AIRLab) in 2012. An alternative to the traditional fourth-year independent research thesis course, AIRLab teams up students from different scientific disciplines – including chemistry, biology, physics and Earth sciences – and assigns a research problem related to their unique skill sets. The teams are given an academic year to work on the project.

What makes AIRLab effective, Piunno said, is that it teaches students about what to expect in their future careers. “As much as we all think we’re training every student in our course to go to grad school and pursue a master’s and a PhD, a lot of students aren’t going to grad school – a lot of them are going into industry,” said Piunno.

What’s very important to industry, he said, is critical thinking skills and the ability to work across disciplines, to “mesh as a team.” Piunno designed AIRLab with that in mind, drawing on his prior experience working with a U.S.-based life sciences company.

“I had to get out there and put together a team of mechanical, optical, electrical and software engineers – I had a biology team and chemistry team and nobody on the team spoke each other’s language,” said Piunno, who worked on a patent for an RNA diagnostics tool as a PhD student.

“In order to pull off this commercialization endeavor, they all had to jump in and row the boat in the same direction.”

Drawing on that industry experience, and the need for teamwork and communications skills, Piunno wishes he had the skills he teaches his students when he was starting out.

“A lot of the real-world challenges come from problems that have to address multiple disciplines, and you need multiple people to come together,” said Piunno, who has also developed a second-year interdisciplinary course that introduces field-based scientific research to undergraduates.

Piunno is humbled to receive a President’s Teaching Award.

“This is a crescendo of everything I’ve experienced throughout my career,” said Piunno. “The imposter syndrome is kicking in pretty hard right now.

“I just enjoy doing what I do, and doing the best I can to be that professor that inspires, encourages and is always enthusiastic – and by that same token, hold my students to high standards and make sure that they’ve worked for their credit and learned something.”

Five new University Professors

U of T also announced faculty who were newly promoted to University Professor, the highest rank for faculty at the university. The honour recognizes “unusual scholarly achievement and pre-eminence in a particular field of knowledge.”

The new University Professors are:

Elizabeth Edwards, department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry and the department of cell and systems biology
Prabhat Jha, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Anita McGahan, Rotman School of Management
James Retallack, department of history
Frances Shepherd, department of medicine

Meet U of T's five newest University Professors

perry.king — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 19:56:08 +0000

Meet U of T's five newest University Professors

perry.king Tue, 02/12/2019 - 14:56

Cutline

From left to right: Susan McCahan, vice-provost, academic programs, Chancellor Rose Patten, newly named University Professor Shana Kelley of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and U of T President Meric Gertler (all photos by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Department of Chemistry

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Medicine

Hospital for Sick Children

Humanities

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Five ��߲ݴ�ý professors were recognized this week as the university's newest University Professors, an elite designation bestowed on a small number of faculty members.

Shana Kelley, John Kloppenborg, Tania Li, Douglas Stephan and Stephen Scherer were honoured at a reception on Monday for their productive and influential academic careers. University Professors are chosen for their unusual scholarly achievement and pre-eminence in a particular field of knowledge.

“Our five honorees are global leaders who each have had a profound impact in their respective fields and on society more generally,” said U of T President Meric Gertler.

“They’ve advanced influential new ideas, new methodologies and new technologies. They’ve challenged paradigms and defined entirely new areas of study.”

The five faculty members were presented plaques by President Gertler, Chancellor Rose Patten and Susan McCahan, U of T’s vice-provost of academic programs.

Between them, the five new University Professors have garnered five honorary degrees, four Royal Society of Canada fellowships, three Canada Research Chairs and two Steacie Prizes – which recognize a person under 40 who has made notable contributions to scientific research in Canada.

“For as long as I have been closely associated with the ��߲ݴ�ý, I have had such a keen interest, and inspiration really, about the great talent that is here,” said Chancellor Patten. “It’s uplifting and very humbling, to hear all you’ve done, to see all that you’re doing, to hear your fine words.

“The university is such a pool of talent, and you just raise it higher.”

Meet U of T's five new University Professors:

Shana Kelley

Shana Kelley, from the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, is a trailblazing chemist who has pioneered nanotechnologies for new clinical diagnostic approaches to combat cancer and infectious diseases. Her research, which has been published in dozens of prestigious journals, was behind two molecular diagnostic companies she co-founded – GeneOhm Sciences and Xagenic.

“When I told my parents, they said, ‘You’re a university professor? Haven’t you been doing that for a while?’” joked Kelley prior to the ceremony. “The thing that is very special about it is that it’s your own colleagues who have decided that you’ve achieved this rank.

“That’s a very special kind of recognition. It’s one thing for the outside world, they don’t have to honour your accomplishments, but when your colleagues do it, it’s extra special.”

John Kloppenborg

John Kloppenborg, from the department for the study of religion, is considered one of the leading academics on the origins of Christianity and the New Testament. A 13-time winner of the Dean’s Special Merit Award, he has supervised 28 doctoral students and was an associate editor for a number of major journals in his field.

Kloppenborg used one word to describe his appointment: “daunting.”

“When you look at the list of people who are University Professors at the ��߲ݴ�ý, 50 of them right now, those are astonishing people who have done amazing things.

“It a real honour and humbling experience to receive this.”

Tania Li

A globally recognized anthropologist, Tania Li has investigated land tenure, forest politics, food security and global development. With a particular focus on Indigenous highland communities in Indonesia, Li's three award-winning books have been used in classrooms worldwide.

She was honoured last year with the 2018 Insight Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) – the first U of T researcher to receive this award.

Li, who has worked abroad and been recognized globally for her scholarship, is pleased about being honoured by U of T.

“This particular [award] is like the home team, right? This is the institution where I’m based,” said Li. “I found a rich community of scholars here, and it’s really wonderful to be among that group, to be recognized.”

Stephen Scherer

Stephen Scherer is one of the top genetic researchers in the world, co-founding and leading the Centre for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children, which recently defined genetic factors identifying autism – 300 scientific papers have documented this work, with about 20,000 citations.

He is internationally known for his work studying the structure and function of the human genome, especially his contributions sequencing the first genome of an individual and the human chromosome 7.

Scherer is the director of U of T’s McLaughlin Centre, which seeks to advance genomic medicine through research and education.

But it's the role of teacher that gives him the most satisfaction, he said.

“I contribute through the research I perform but the way I give back is through the teaching and mentoring of students,” said Scherer, who teaches two courses each year. "Now I'm the one providing the environment, the nurturing – whereas, in the past, I was the student.

“To become a University Professor is surreal.”

Douglas Stephan

Douglas Stephan is a celebrated chemist who is a pioneer in the field of organometallic and inorganic chemistry. His first major breakthrough was the discovery of a new class of catalysts for the polymerization of ethylene – basically affecting how plastics are made worldwide. A winner of the Steacie Prize, Stephan has authored nearly 500 scholarly articles, which have been cited more than 40,000 times.

He has garnered nearly every prize possible in chemistry, but says he is humbled by this appointment.

“There’s a number of University Professors in my department, in chemistry, and to be lumped into the same group as those guys is certainly an honour and humbling for sure,” he said.

“These are people I really admire and respect. It’s great.”

University Professor

Two U of T professors honoured with President’s Teaching Award

Read about last year’s winners

Five new University Professors

Meet U of T's five newest University Professors

Shana Kelley

John Kloppenborg

Tania Li

Stephen Scherer

Douglas Stephan

Read more on the five newest University Professors

See a list of all of U of T's University Professors