News

3M Canada and the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) have awarded a 3M National Teaching Fellowship to Joan Conrod, Professor of Accounting with Dalhousie's Rowe School of Business.

Established in 1986, the 3M National Teaching Fellowship program is sponsored jointly by 3M Canada and the STLHE. The program is a remarkable example of private sector and not-for-profit educational cooperation.
 
While at Dalhousie, Joan has been recognized for teaching excellence through awards such as the Faculty of Management Teaching Excellence Award, the PWC Leaders in Management Education Award, the Dalhousie University Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence and the AAU Distinguished Teacher award. She has been chosen as the Commerce Professor of the Year eight times.

The 3M National Teaching Fellowship has earned an enviable national and international reputation. It is the only pan-Canadian, cross-disciplinary recognition of educational leadership and excellence in university teaching. Fellows must fulfill two principal criteria: 1) superlative undergraduate teaching, sustained over several years, and 2) through superior leadership, enhancing post-secondary teaching excellence locally.
Fellows receive no tangible rewards, no money, and no research grants. Instead, they are given lifetime memberships in the STLHE and a four-day scholarly retreat at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in November. The 2013 cohort will join the 3M National Teaching Fellowship formally at the annual conference, hosted by Cape Breton University, on June 22 in Sydney, NS. Fellowship is not a 'thing', but a growing body of over 260 dedicated and inspiring teachers, a critical mass of educational experience and energy. The retreat generates momentum, and the Fellowship has continued to make a difference in post-secondary education for over 27 years.

From the STLHE website:
Joan Conrod’s students know they are required to stay focused until the very end of class, and even mice on the Dalhousie campus understand what this means. One of her students describes “the day a mouse popped up in class… Conrod calmly continued to teach. As she kept explaining depreciation models, she found a box and carefully trapped the mouse in the box. She never skipped a beat.”

As enthusiastic as she is demanding of her students and herself, Joan emphasizes how being a great accountant requires a careful blend of deep technical knowledge, mastery of a complex international language, and most important of all, strong ethical judgment. Someone can be advantaged, and someone can be hurt by every decision an accountant makes, so Joan insists her students understand the implications of their decisions, and her results are impressive. Joan Conrod’s students achieve excellent results in professional examinations in Canada, and top accounting firms seek out Joan’s students because they can "hit the ground running.”  Her pride shines brightest at convocation, where every Accounting student, by name, receives cheers, smiles and hugs from “the most generous, motivating, inspirational and knowledgeable teacher” they have known.

Read more about the awards