The University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic scooped nearly
25% of national teaching excellence awards in a series of
"remarkably good" results over the past five years.
Otago University biochemistry senior teaching fellow Tony
Zaharic, Otago Polytechnic's Dunedin School of Art head Prof
Leoni Schmidt, and Peter Bilous, a Wanaka-based polytechnic
senior lecturer, are the latest winners of sustained
excellence awards this year.
Prof Schmidt said Otago Polytechnic staff members involved in
a wide range of disciplines had won teaching excellence
awards for the past five years in a row - a total of six
awards.
Otago University staff received seven awards over the same
period, including the Prime Minister's Supreme Award, and
$30,000, which senior law lecturer Selene Mize won in 2009.
Dr Peter Schwartz, of the university pathology department,
won the supreme award in 2003.
Prof Schmidt, whose research interests include contemporary
drawing and art history, said the series of awards showed the
two Dunedin tertiary institutions were providing consistently
good teaching.
Associate Prof Rachel Spronken-Smith, who heads the
university Higher Education Development Centre (HEDC), said
the "remarkably good" outcome in the Ako Aotearoa, National
Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence awards reflected
positively on Dunedin's tertiary education industry.
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