2010 Excellence in Teaching Winner: Sebastien Despres

In the past twelve months, Sébastien Després' schedule has been superbly full of teaching activities. In his role as Assistant to the Director of the University’s Writing Centre, Sébastien guided a number of graduate student through the thesis research and writing process, worked with ESL students to help them learn English and better their writing, designed and implemented an online tutoring delivery program for the Centre, delivered online tutoring and teaching to a number of students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, helped train the Centre’s teaching staff and tutors, and created and offered a number of workshops. Since April 2009, Sébastien presented five conference papers, presented a poster, co-organized and facilitated a roundtable discussion, and gave a lecture during the NewFound Music Festival. In addition to this, Sébastien gave guest lectures in a number of classes, and worked as a Teaching Assistant for the Department of Anthropology where he developed presentations for faculty. During this first year of teaching as a sessional instructor, Sébastien attended over twenty workshops devoted to developing teaching skills, received his TOGA Certification (Level 2), and actively participated in two Faculty Learning Communities for teaching. This professional development compelled him to reflect on his teaching practice, which resulted in the preparation of a conference paper on the use of information and communication technologies in the university classroom, which will be presented at the upcoming conference of the Canadian Anthropology Society. In addition to his own teaching activities, Sébastien has also worked to enhance the level of teaching at Memorial University through his participation in a number of committees charged with the direction and the administration of courses and programs offered at Memorial. His reflexive and contemplative attitude to teaching, along with the many hours of professional development he completed, allowed him to refine his teaching practice - a fact recognized by his students, who, on the course evaluation questionnaires administered by Memorial University, ranked his teaching among the 90th decile at the university in terms of quality of instruction offered.