The Centre for Teaching and Learning is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2017-2020 Trent Teaching Fellowships: Dr. Nadine Changfoot, Dr. Michael Hickson, and Dr. Carolyn Kay.

The Trent Teaching Fellowships provide an opportunity for faculty to pursue meaningful and sustained initiatives in the areas of teaching, leadership, innovation, and scholarship.  Each of the three Teaching Fellows will receive a one-time grant of $6,000 to support their project over the three-year period. The Teaching Fellowships offer a catalyst for change and innovation in teaching and learning within Trent while providing Teaching Fellows an opportunity for educational leadership.

Read more about each teaching fellow and their projects:

Dr. Nadine Changfoot, an associate professor who has taught in the Political Studies department since 2004, will focus on guiding student creation of critical content for Wikipedia in a range of subject areas within critical disability studies. Professor Changfoot notes that her goals for students include the strengthening of targeted writing skills, media and information literacy, critical thinking, research skills, collaboration, and communication skills oriented toward the creation of critically informed content with rigorous research and citation of authoritative sources not only for Wikipedia, but also applicable public domain and open access knowledge sources.

Dr. Michael Hickson, an assistant professor who has taught at Trent in the Philosophy department since 2013, will focus his work on developing a set of best practices for delivering case-based courses in applied ethics, and on developing strategies for incorporating current events from the news into case-based pedagogy.

“There is a civic need for greater media literacy in this age of ‘fake news’ and political apathy,” he explains while saying he is looking forward to the opportunity to implement pedagogical research to strengthen the delivery of courses in applied ethics, and enhance the capacity of students to critically engage with the news.

Dr. Carolyn Kay, a History professor at Trent, will focus on designing and measuring approaches to teaching the history of genocide, with a particular emphasis on using innovative methods of learning, teaching, and evaluation, while simultaneously working to better understand factors that impact student anxiety in the course of learning difficult subject matter. Kay, a past recipient of the Symons Award for Excellence in Teaching as well as the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations Teaching Award, notes that her goals include increasing student understanding of genocide, deepening awareness of the human cost and the human experience of oppression in many different contexts, and evaluating different methods of instruction as to their effect upon student learning.

The Teaching Fellowship program is designed to elevate the status of teaching while positively impacting student learning, engagement, retention, and success. Funding for the Teaching Fellowships is provided by the generosity of an anonymous donor, and by support from the Office of the Provost