The Awards: 5

I've been named to the Department of Psychology's Honour Roll with Distinction for all three courses I taught last term. Thank-you to everyone, and special thanks to those who went to the trouble of giving written comments. I'm not going to post "best-of" student comments this time because (a) I've done that before, (b) there weren't many comments that, er...cry out for a response (most were constructive and helpful, which is great!), and (c) I don't want to reinforce anyone trolling for their comments to be posted in this blog (getcher own blog, eh?).

This time, I want to congratulate my colleagues who were named to the Honour Roll:

• Brown, N. (PSYCO 405 X5)
• Dixon, P. (PSYCO 258)
• Friedman, A. (PSYCO 212)
• Hurd, P. (PSYCO 400/409)
• Masuda, T. (PSYCO 241 B1, PSYCO 305)
• Passey, J. (PSYCO 105 B1, PSYCO 233)
• Schimel, J. (PSYCO 105 B4)
• Spalding, T. (PSYCO 105 B3, PSYCO 405 B2)
• Snyder, M. (PSYCO 403 B2)
• Westbury, C. (PSYCO 339)
• Wylie, D. (PSYCO 267 B2)

And those who were named to the Honour Roll with Distinction:

• Busink, R. (PSYCO 436)
• Caplan, J. (PSYCO 403 B4)
• Colbourne, F. (PSYCO 403 B1)
• Gagne, C. (PSYCO 532)
• Hurd, P. (PSYCO 414/505)
• Kuiken, D. (PSYCO 415)
• Lee, P. (PSYCO 105 S1)
• Mou, W. (PSYCO 403 B3)
• Mullins, B. (PSYCO 104 B2)
• Nicoladis, E. (PSYCO 323)
• Noels, K. (PSYCO 300)
• Passey, J. (PSYCO 241 S1, PSYCO 405 B1)
• Singhal, A. (PSYCO 377)
• Spetch, M. (PSYCO 485)
• Todd, K. (PSYCO 475)
• Varnhagen, C. (SCI 100)
• Watchorn, R. (PSYCO 323)
• Wylie, D. (PSYCO 405 B3)

Quite a list, isn't it? I think the criteria are pretty stringent (see below for details); that means the Department has a lot of great teachers. I am humbled to be included among them.

Here are the criteria for the awards:
1. The course section median response was equal to or greater than 4.0; for Honors with Distinction, the course section median response was greater than 4.0 and at least 45% of the students agreed strongly that the instructor was “Excellent;” For classes with fewer than 10 students enrolled, the majority of students responded “Agree” or “Strongly Agree”; for Honors with Distinction, the majority of the majority responded “Strongly Agree”;
2. At least 60% of the class responded to the questionnaire;
3. There were no abnormalities in the grade distributions (e.g., distributions skewed too high or too low);
4. Instruction was conducted in accord with the ethical standards of teaching as outlined by the APA and CPA.

Why aren't you studying?