We are very pleased that Global Challenges Field Leader and Principal Teaching Fellow, Dr Elizabeth Hauke has been awarded the 2017 President’s Medal for Excellence in Teaching.
The President’s Medal is the highest level of award in the President’s Awards for Excellence in Education, which celebrate and acknowledge staff who have made an outstanding contribution towards a supportive learning environment.The panel commented:
Elizabeth’s teaching is highly innovative and challenging and despite this still receives strong, positive student feedback. Her excellence as a teacher has an international recognition, she has an MEd and has published pedagogic research. She has contributed to Education Day and is one of Imperial’s key educational experts. She is a 10/10 teacher all the way.
The award was presented on 20th June 2017, and the medal will be presented in 2018. The citation at the awards ceremony was as follows:
Elizabeth Hauke is a gifted educator: she single-handedly devised and implemented –from scratch– one of the most innovative modules in the whole College, the Global Challenges field of Imperial Horizons. Under Elizabeth’s guidance, Global Challenges has gone from strength to strength. The defining characteristic of the pedagogical approach taken by Elizabeth is that students have to become aware of the limitations of their discipline, as well as break the mental walls of “thinking in silos” that often define field-specific knowledge. I have witnessed first hand how Elizabeth carefully and deftly guides our students into the (for them) unchartered territory of cross-disciplinary thinking, developing in the process their creativity, critical abilities, communication and teamwork skills. I dare say that her approach is a model for 21st century learning—and our students greatly benefit from it.
Indeed, in her award-winning MEd work she convincingly argues for the importance of giving STEM students the opportunity to develop the kind of critical, independent thinking that alone can make them fully developed scholars. Her innovations in education and her international leadership in the field of sustainable human development, global issues and innovative teaching have been recognised by a large number of prestigious awards. This reflects positively on College as a whole, and in many ways defines Imperial as a place of teaching and learning innovation.
Elizabeth is one of the most energetic, stimulating and committed lecturers I have ever met. She is a brilliant teacher, offering (for example) 24-hours-turnaround detailed feedback to hundreds of Global Challenges students right throughout her course. She is an exemplar of dedicated teacher: she puts her students’ needs first, and she gives individual, tailored attention to each one of them. I have no hesitation in recommending her for a President’s Award in the strongest possible terms. She thoroughly deserves it.