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Awards
2024 Cormack Teaching Award winners: Celebrating excellence in teaching at FASS
Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) is pleased to announce the winners of this year's Cormack Teaching Awards, who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to student learning, pedagogical engagement, and teaching innovation throughout their career at FASS.
As part of this recognition, the six award winners will present a brief talk on their pedagogy and teaching philosophy at the annual Cormack Teaching Symposium, which will take place on September 24. The symposium is open to all FASS faculty and staff, with lunch catered for all attendees who register by September 16.
2024 Award Winners
Janice Matsumura
Janice Matsumura's research expertise lies in modern Japanese history, with a particular interest in the Japanese thought control/internal security system and the Japanese psychiatric profession. Described as a thoughtful and innovative educator, Matsumura’s undergraduate teaching is characterized by careful thought and reflection, strong and deep connections with students, and dry humour. Her teaching goals revolve around making connections across time and space, so that Japan doesn’t remain for students “an alien planet with samurai”. When teaching about the North American Nikkei experience, Matsumura enriches her student’s connection to the course material by sharing some of her family’s history, which included the wartime internment, dispossession, and expatriation of Japanese Canadians. This approach has led to some insightful discussions in the classroom which allow students to become more engaged with the content.
Kathleen Millar
Kathleen Millar is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and an associate member of the School for International Studies. Her work explores relationships between labour, economy, and urban life. Her award-winning book, Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labour on Rio’s Garbage Dump, traces the life projects of thousands of urban poor who earn a living by collecting recyclables on a garbage dump in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her current project examines Brazil's largest consumer debt crisis in its history through an ethnographic study of the lived experience of default. Millar teaches courses on social theory, contemporary ethnography, labour and capitalism, ethnographic writing, and Latin American studies.
Margaret Grant
Margaret Grant is a lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and the Cognitive Science Program. Her research focuses on experimental investigations of sentence comprehension, including semantic processing and ambiguity resolution. Grant is also interested in the relationship between psycholinguistics and linguistic theory, and how these two fields may inform one another. On top of her research activities, Grant has taken an active role in developing blended courses that are challenging and engaging for students. Praised for her compassionate approach to teaching, Grant takes the lead in the department’s equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts, both in her courses and her involvement with the linguistics and cognitive science communities. Her teaching philosophy centers on fostering engagement and belonging in her students by creating active learning opportunities, improving course accessibility and equitability, and promoting personal connection between students’ lived experiences and course concepts.
Sabrina Higgins
Sabrina Higgins is an assistant professor in the Departments of Global Humanities and Archaeology. Her work is inherently multidisciplinary, intersecting the fields of Late Antique studies, archaeology, religious studies, art history, papyrology, and gender studies. More broadly, she is interested in the ways in which art and space interact within Late-Antique Christianity religious structures and the manner in which art is used by socially-marginalized populations to exert agency. Her research is also grounded in the digital humanities and public scholarship as she is a founding member of both the Digital Mary Project (an open-access collection of material culture related to the Virgin Mary in the Eastern Mediterranean) and Peopling the Past (a Digital Humanities initiative that produces and hosts free, open-access resources for teaching and learning about real people in the ancient world). In the classroom, Higgins prioritizes a multimodal approach to student learning which encourages her students to be creative with their assignments, develop critical thinking skills, and draw meaningful connections between antiquity and the contemporary world.
Sanjay Jeram
Sanjay Jeram is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science. His dissertation examined why regional nationalist parties followed different pathways in their responses to immigration. Emerging Canadian and European scholars continue to cite the spinoff publications. Dr. Jeram has also co-authored articles on how Canadians' multifaceted identities influence their interactions with the political system and its outputs, such as universal healthcare, federalism, and the party system. He is currently researching the evolution of right-wing ideology across Canadian provinces. His dedication to pedagogical innovation is reflected in his recent publications on active learning in research methods classes and the importance of group-based learning in high-enrollment courses. Dr. Jeram is well-regarded by students for his enthusiasm and inclusive approach to teaching foundational lecture courses in political science. He is currently implementing new strategies to teach practical writing skills through engagement with political science research.
Simon Woodcock
Simon Woodcock is an associate professor at the Department of Economics and director of the Social Data Analytics minor program. His research interests are in labour economics, applied econometrics, and microeconomic theory. Lauded for his role in pushing for a more job market-oriented focus in the Economics undergraduate program, Woodcock's teaching approach is centered around helping his students develop practical skills and experimenting with novel strategies to better engage his students. This is evident with his teaching of three central data skills courses that are popular among economics major students, and his students routinely praise his dedication and compassion. Woodcock is also highly involved in the economics graduate program, having served as graduate program chair for seven years, and holding the department record as the most successful supervisor of graduate students to date.