English Faculty Recognized for Teaching Excellence
The Department of English congratulates Dr. Lorraine Janzen Kooistra and Dr. Colleen Derkatch for receiving awards for teaching excellence.
Dr. Derkatch received the 2013 Faculty of Arts New Faculty Teaching Award. "I am honoured to receive this award," says Dr. Derkatch. "It's partly a recognition of the strength of Ryerson students: in all of my teaching, I foreground my role as a facilitator of students’ own learning, and I work to impart a strong sense of their own abilities as junior scholars. I strive to teach them to be self-teachers, and it's gratifying to watch them rise to the challenge. It's a skill they can carry with them throughout their careers and lives."
Dr. Janzen Kooistra received the 2013 Provost's Experiential Teaching Award, which is given annually to a professor who has an outstanding teaching record and who has made contributions to advancing teaching and learning at Ryerson, with a particular focus on students' experiential learning. This university-wide award is an impressive testament to Dr. Janzen's personal pedagogical excellence and innovation. As the English Department’s founding Undergraduate Program Director, she was a prime mover in the creation and rollout of Ontario’s newest and most distinctive English BA: its innovation is to combine the best of traditional university‐level literary studies with cutting‐edge opportunities for experiential learning and digital humanities research and training. "What thrills me most about this award is the recognition it brings to the Department of English and the Faculty of Arts for our collective commitment to experiential learning and undergraduate research," says Dr. Janzen.
Dr. Janzen also received a prestigious 2012/13 Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) Teaching Award. The awards recognize exceptional contributions made by professors to the quality of higher education in Ontario. Dr. Janzen's receiving of the OCUFA award is covered in an article in Ryerson Today.
Dr. Janzen is featured in the video "Faculty of Arts – Home of Teaching Excellence".
(In photos - left image: Provost Dr. John Isbister with Dr. Lorraine Janzen Kooistra and her students. Right image: Dr. Jean-Paul Boudreau, Dean of Arts, presents award to Dr. Colleen Derkatch).