On 21 November, Macquarie will celebrate the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Awards for Learning and Teaching and Professional Staff.

For the next four weeks, we will be shining a light on the accomplishments and impact of the Learning and Teaching Awards Highly Commended Finalists. We start with ‘The leaders in excellence’ – an exceptional group of staff whose teaching inspire others to achieve their best.

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Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence

This award recognises staff for their excellence in teaching and support of learning and the impact they have on influencing, motivating and inspiring students to learn.

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Associate Professor Kathleen Tait, Macquarie School of Education

With just one student completion in 2020, Associate Professor Kathleen Tait has transformed the Independent Education Project unit into an independent, self-paced learning experience – for students of any background. In 2022, there will be 84 successful completions.

When Tait was engaged to provide one-on-one mentoring in 2020-21, she immediately recognised the difficulty facing students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with English as a second language.

To support their unique learning requirements – before they submitted assignments – Tait developed seminars and supplementary activities to teach students essential research and writing skills.

In 2021, she became Co-convener of the unit, and this year, as completions of the unit started to skyrocket, she accepted the role of Unit Convener.

An advocate for fostering work-related knowledge and skills, Tait has inspired her students to learn so successfully, some of their work has been published in professional journals.

“The steep trajectory from novice to expert researcher was overwhelming. Students with English as a second or third language were at a serious disadvantage. I believe they should become empowered by their own development as professionals. Of course this does not happen spontaneously – as their teacher, I have a crucial role to play in designing activities that simulate professional practice and orchestrate classroom interactions that mediate learning.”

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Professor Iain Collings, School of Engineering

The enthusiastic reviews on Professor Iain Collings’ YouTube channel speak volumes for the transformative impact of his teaching – both for his students at Macquarie and the international engineering community.

From students to teachers to practicing engineers in all corners of the globe, Collings’ videos have received 1.1 million views in the past 12 months with ‘Likes’ at 98.6 per cent. The comments also serve as a source of new topic ideas, so he can continually add to his 191 videos (52 this year).

Collings’ student-learning philosophy is underpinned by the videos, which support a self-directed flexible pace – as bite-size topics of the whole unit; on-demand searchable answers; and browsable ‘fundamental understanding’ content. He also strives to inspire and enable his colleagues to enhance their approach to learning and teaching.

“My videos are carefully planned and produced to provide a genuine feeling that the viewer is receiving personalised one-on-one attention, engaged in the thinking process behind the concepts and ideas.

“I no longer present lectures, instead flipping the classroom and challenging students in practical sessions linked to industrial applications. I seek to influence student thinking and their fundamental understanding of complex and abstract concepts while providing clear practical connections and application to real-world engineering systems and design.”

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Associate Professor Riza Casidy, Department of Marketing

Associate Professor Riza Casidy’s passion is to integrate academic research within business education to solve society’s biggest problems.

His ‘scholarly authentic’ approach addresses the gap between graduate skills and employer expectations, empowering students to engage with business organisations and propose practical recommendations based on their analysis of scholarly literature.

This approach has transformed his students into active, strongly engaged learners that are equipped with real-world employability skills, and highly capable of forging meaningful connections with industry.

Casidy’s empirical article on scholarly authentic approach has provided intellectual leadership on best practices in business education, with 118 citations received to date.

“Associate Professor Casidy has been instrumental in linking marketing students with the industry through his authentic teaching approach that empowers students to apply theories to address contemporary challenges faced by organisations” – Narendra Prasad, Former CEO, Australian Marketing Institute

“I am glad that your students not only demonstrate good knowledge of marketing theories, but also an ability to apply their learning to address challenges faced by our organisation. Hopefully, we can see some of your students working as part of MYOB’s team in the near future.” – Edward Dennis, SEO Manager, MYOB

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Vice-Chancellor’s Educational Leader Award

This award recognises educational leadership that has influenced and enhanced learning and teaching and/or student experience.

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Associate Professor Vida Siahtiri, Department of Marketing

In just five years at Macquarie, Associate Professor Vida Siahtiri has not only developed the University’s first specialised postgraduate marketing course, but taken it from five enrolments to 310, and the number-one ranking in Australia (top 20 in the world).

In designing the course, Siahtiri conducted extensive market research including a sector-wide competitor analysis, industry consultation with leading marketers, and employability studies investigating current and emerging skills and job opportunities.

“I adopt various approaches to advance students’ employability skills beyond the classroom. This extends to reviewing student CVs, career advice and connecting students with industry partners. The Master of Marketing employability program was recognised by Professor S Bruce Dowton, Vice-Chancellor and nominated to represent the University in the 2021 Australian Financial Review Higher Education Awards under the Employability Award category.

“I also work to empower and inspire my colleagues to adopt innovative teaching and collaboration with extensive mentorship and a support-based ecosystem for fostering a collegial environment.” – Associate Professor Vida Siahtiri

“I consider Vida my most influential academic mentor as she always tries so hard to bring out the best in me by creating a collaborative and collegial learning environment.” – Dr Pardis Mohajerani

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Dr Nathan Daczko, Dr Prashan Karunaratne, Dr Natalie Spence, Dr Matt Owers, Dr Joanne Dawson and Dr Andrea Chareunsy, School of Natural Sciences, Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics, Department of Economics

The innovative cross-faculty collaboration that brought these team members together continues as students in both faculties complete their capstone units – together, tackling the global call -to-action posed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The ‘agile’ world of work that emerged from the 2020-2021 COVID upheaval was the impetus for the development of two unique cross-disciplinary capstone units in which Bachelor of Commerce students consult with their Bachelor of Science counterparts, and vice versa. Invaluable project feedback and support is given to each team through a business or science lens. The units replace almost 40 major-based capstones.

Using a blend of three learning methodologies, the new units are designed to ensure students are prepared for the world of work through active and transformative learning.

“These are multi-dimensional, cross-disciplinary, cross-sector, complex programs that integrate contributions from many individual expert viewpoints to give the students a holistic and integrated experience. It’s an opportunity for students to cross-consult across the schools.

“An innovative aspect of the capstone units involves an exciting three-week cross-over between Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Science students, with each student consulting and offering expert advice on the project briefs from the other discipline. Students experience greater confidence working in teams, and learn about the importance of seeking professional feedback.” – Dr Nathan Daczko

“It is abundantly clear that this feedback is invaluable.” – Macquarie student

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