AUS professors honored for excellence in teaching

American University of Sharjah (AUS) recently honored four members of faculty with the Excellence in Teaching Award for the academic year 2010-2011. The recipients were Dr. Pernille Arenfeldt, from the College of Arts and Sciences; Dr. Martin Giesen, of the College of Architecture, Art and Design; Dr. Michael Malcolm from the School of Business and Management; and Dr. Fadi Ahmed Aloul, of the College of Engineering.

The Excellence in Teaching Award honors a member of faculty who has made the most significant contribution to the quality of instruction within the college. Each college and school was charged this year with the task of establishing a process for identifying an individual faculty member whose work reflected the highest standards of excellence in teaching. The competition also involved students in the selection process to choose the four winners, as is fitting in a competition to identify excellence in teaching.

Eligibility requirements included the faculty member being at AUS for at least three years with 2010-2011 being their fourth year and all faculty applying for the award had to provide sufficient documentation to support their candidacy.

"The four teaching awards were created as a way to acknowledge individual examples of excellence in the classroom and laboratory, and in so doing, to honor in a virtual sense the contributions of all faculty as teachers and mentors of our students," AUS provost, Thomas J. Hochstettler, said today.

"The AUS Faculty Senate has been advocating the creation of awards for faculty excellence as a way to celebrate particularly outstanding examples of innovation and engagement in teaching, research, and service. Such prizes have been granted before in the history of the university, and the administration has been very pleased this year to reintroduce the practice of publicly acclaiming examples of high achievement and distinction among our faculty," added Hochstettler.