Fellows recognised by students for innovative teaching

Two St Catharine’s Fellows are in contention for the ‘Innovative Teaching’ category in this year’s Student-Led Teaching Awards (SLTAs). Professors Julian Allwood (2018) and Richard Dance (1997) have been shortlisted after students nominated them for their creative, inventive and original teaching methods.

The STLAs are organised by the Cambridge Student Union to reward outstanding teaching and student support across the University and its Colleges, and have gone from strength to strength since their inception, becoming widely respected throughout the University. The Innovative Teaching award celebrates examples of teaching that provide an alternative to traditional methods, are especially exciting and engaging and are accessible to all students.

Professor Allwood is the College’s Dudley Robinson Professorial Fellow in Engineering and Director of Studies and supervisor for Engineering (Parts Ib and IIa). He is responsible for giving approximately 330 undergraduate engineers an introduction to Structural Mechanics in the first term of their first year at Cambridge, while his popular Climate Change Mitigation course is designed to inspire roughly 150 fourth-year students to engage with the reality of implementing meaningful climate change mitigation and to equip them with skills to help us achieve more rapid progress. Professor Allwood explains:

“These courses serve different purposes for very different audiences. I reinvented the first-year course with a dozen short videos filmed on a green-screen background and an engaging theme song – the syllabus set as a pop song – featuring the College’s Lydia Clay-White (2018, Classics) on vocals and Operations Director Helen Hayward (2018) in the band. My goal was to provide some new entertainment and enthusiasm in the first term, particularly to compensate for the rigours of being a fresher in lockdown.

“In contrast, I used the green screen to deliver the Climate Change Mitigation course as if in front of a white wall on which I could project supporting graphics. The course aims to give a sense of the big picture, combining a realistic sense of all the technological options with an overview of the political, commercial and personal pathways (and barriers) to implementation. We’re currently finalising a condensed version of the course as six 10-minute films, for general release on YouTube.”

Professor Dance is a Professorial Fellow of St Catharine’s, Praelector and Director of Studies in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC). As Professor of Early English, he is the principal teacher of Old English in Cambridge, and lectures and supervises widely in that subject (and in Germanic Philology) for the ASNC tripos. He commented:

“Now we’re back to teaching in person again this year, it’s been brilliant to be able to introduce students to the colourful world of the earliest English language and literature using all the means at our disposal. I start from scratch in classes and lectures for first-years, using everything from cartoon images and audio clips to bespoke grammar sheets and an ‘animal of the week’. And we carry on all the way up to advanced seminars at Part II, where we get to muck about with the whole of Beowulf in the original language, and explore Old English and Old Norse in their full comparative linguistic contexts. Our students are fantastic, and it’s always such a pleasure to work through this enthralling material with them.”

Relying only on the feedback and testimonials of students, the STLAs are a unique opportunity for students to recognise the exceptional contribution of teaching and non-teaching staff to their education at Cambridge. The 2022 awards will be presented on Wednesday 11 May at an in-person ceremony after the awards were announced online last year.

UPDATE: While neither Fellow was announced as the eventual winner, Professor Dance was recognised by the judges and highly commended on the night. View the list of winners.