Dr. Graham Pike, VIU's Dean of International Education; Heather Pastro, Vice-Chair of VIU's Senate; and Stephanie Pastro, a VIU Social Sciences student representative (not pictured), attended the Global Teaching Excellence Award gala event in Edinburgh on July 18, 2018.
October 16, 2018 - 7:45pm
VIU is now recognized as a world leader in teaching excellence. The University was named a finalist for Advance He’s 2018 Global Teaching Excellence Award. Introduced last year in association with Times Higher Education, the award recognizes and celebrates an institution-wide commitment to the pursuit of teaching excellence.
VIU was one of 17 finalists shortlisted from 400 applications from institutions around the world, and one of just two universities in Canada to make the list. Here’s what Advance HE had to say about VIU:
“The institution’s commitment to social responsibility, and particularly to Indigenous people, shines through the submission. The priority given to teaching and learning can be seen as having the same root – the transformative power of higher education is most effective when learners experience high-quality teaching.”
Dr. Ralph Nilson, VIU President and Vice-Chancellor, says this accolade would not have been possible without the institution’s dedicated faculty, who put enormous effort into creating the kind of learning environment that achieves international recognition.
“The most important relationship at this institution is the relationship between the teacher and the learner, and as a regional university with a primary focus on teaching, this recognition is a clear demonstration of the quality of the education available at VIU,” he says. “I’d also like to give a nod to the University’s Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning for continually raising our expectations of ourselves in terms of the learning environment we are creating, and all employees at VIU, not just faculty, for the institution-wide effort that gets put into a culture of support and success for every VIU student.”
Dr. Graham Pike, VIU’s Dean of International Education; Heather Pastro, Vice-Chair of VIU’s Senate; and Stephanie Pastro, a VIU Social Sciences student representative, attended the Global Teaching Excellence Award gala event in Edinburgh on July 18.
*This article originally appeared in the Fall 2018 edition of VIU Magazine. Check out more stories on the VIU Magazine webpage.
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