Brent Faught

Five Brock professors have been recognized with internal awards for their outstanding contributions to teaching.

“The ongoing dedication of these individuals provide our students with a first-class learning experience,” says Murray Knuttila, Provost and Vice-President Academic. “The work they do, inside and outside the classroom, develops students’ intellects, stimulates their imaginations, and inspires them to be future leaders of society.”

Brock University Award for Distinguished Teaching:

Brent Faught, associate professor of epidemiology, Community Health Sciences, will receive the award for Distinguished Teaching. This is the second major award for teaching excellence he has received from Brock this year. He also received the Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching at Spring Convocation. He will receive the distinguished teaching award at Fall Convocation.

Mary-Beth Raddon

This award, presented annually to a Brock faculty member, recognizes instructors who have made remarkable contributions to creative teaching, student learning, curriculum development and the mentoring of colleagues.

Faught has a long-standing record of teaching excellence and curriculum innovation in courses that range from large first-year courses in health policy to fourth-year courses in epidemiology. In addition to teaching courses on exercise physiology, anatomy and epidemiology, he has also developed courses in areas such as health sciences information technology and clinical health assessments.

During his 18 years at Brock, Faught has explored new models of seminar delivery and evaluation, adopted new teaching technologies, and mentored many undergraduate and graduate students. He helped develop an intensive two-week Supercourse based on a compressed course delivery model. This inventive approach provided students with greater flexibility in balancing their work-life and degree-completion aspirations.

Maureen Connelly

Outside the classroom, Faught is involved in developing collaborative agreements with various colleges. He also initiated the university’s Firefighter Screening Services — a community outreach program designed to assess the physical and psychological ability of firefighter candidates in terms of health- and job-specific performance.

“In my twenty-year career at Brock, I have met very few faculty members who possess the energy, enthusiasm and genuine dedication to teaching excellence that Brent has,” says Anna Lathrop, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences. “He is always eager to rise to a challenge, and loves nothing more than to imagine how to teach differently and more effectively.”

Brock University Chancellor’s Chairs for Excellence in Teaching Awards:

The Chancellor’s Chairs for Teaching Excellence program was created in 2005 to support Brock’s commitment to teaching, learning and educational technology.

Gail Frost

These awards are designed to provide successful candidates with the opportunity to undertake a specific three-year program of research and practice leading to a significant development in teaching, learning or educational technology. Recipients receive an annual support grant of $5,000 in each of the three years.

The 2010-2013 Chancellor’s Chairs for Teaching Excellence award recipients are:

• Mary-Beth Raddon, associate professor, Sociology
  Project title: “Evaluation of Foundations in Service Learning”
  The evaluation of a new pilot course in Service Learning – combined classroom and community-based learning – offers an opportunity to evaluate the educational value of this initiative. The evaluation of this course will include a critical contextual analysis of the course and its philosophies, documentation of the course design and implementation, qualitative assessment of students’ learning outcomes, and a quantitative analysis of the impact of the course on student engagement.

• Maureen Connolly, professor, and Gail Frost, associate professor, Physical Education and Kinesiology (shared award)
  Project title: “Real People/Deep Learning”
  Learners need chances to practice the skills they will need in their professional lives. This project will develop educational experiences rooted in problem-based and service-based learning that allow students to work with real people within the framework of course assignments. The project will track, analyze and reflect upon students’ engagements with their “clients” in order to provide evidence and advice in developing these teaching methods and supporting others’ interest in them.
  

  Don Cyr

• Don Cyr, associate professor, Finance, Operations and Information Systems
  Project title: “Using VSC (video screen capture)”
  This projects aims to test the benefits of using video screen capture (VSC) modules for instructing mathematically-based material, particularly in finance education. The research program will investigate whether the use of VSC modules for student learning result in a significant increase in course performance, whether they can act as substitutes for face-to-face classroom instruction, whether the modules are of value to international students with limited English language proficiency, and whether their effectiveness is moderated based upon identified learning styles.