News

The recipient of the Dalhousie University Faculty of Agriculture 2016 Instructor Award for Teaching Excellence is Karen Smith, Department of Environmental Sciences.

Ms. Smith has been an instructor on our campus since 2009, but she has been contributing to the Agricultural Campus for much longer than that as a research assistant and grounds supervisor. She has a deep familiarity with our “living laboratory” and has conveyed her passion for creating beautiful environments to her students.

Over the years, Ms. Smith has developed and maintained an interactive and positive teaching style. Her overall goal is to make learning enjoyable. She is committed to taking students from being passive learners to active participants. She takes particular pride in creating an experience that is accessible to learners of different cultural backgrounds, and has applied that experience recently to her work with our landscape architecture partnership with FAFU. She embraces opportunities to learn herself, constantly updating her material and learning new technologies. She willingly steps up to take on new courses and support the Faculty’s programs and academic plans, which often requires her to study new material before delivering it to the students. She is among the first of our faculty members to engage in delivering distance learning through video conferencing, and her experience is helping us to refine this process.

"Karen is a naturally passionate individual and genuinely concerned about  student learning," explained Department Chair Dr. Raj Lada  "Her efforts and energy blended with her passion, enthusiasm, knowledge and skills, provides the best learning environment to our students."

Above all, Ms. Smith is committed to supporting her students.  She takes the time to connect with each student individually to check their understanding and provide additional support when needed. She creates an environment where students are comfortable approaching her and know that they can rely on her to help them understand complicated material. She makes a point of learning about her students’ stories, which helps her connect with them and understand what their strengths and challenges may be. To put it simply, as one student did in a course evaluation: “She is amazing.”