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Speech By Alice Gardner, Recipient of Trustees' Award for Teaching Excellence
Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to the Board of Trustees of MCPHS for initiating this award and with providing myself, and MCPHS faculty, an opportunity to enhance our professional development.
Also, a sincere thank-you to the faculty and students who served as Committee members for the Trustees' Award for Teaching Excellence and for their work in the selection process.
Moreover, I feel privileged to have been nominated for this award by the students and faculty, and very honored to receive it.
On reflecting about what teaching and being a professor means to me, I decided to look at the letters and evaluations from students and colleagues to see what they revealed about me as a teacher.
There were three words that I thought embodied the essence of these evaluations and of which I will speak: passion, commitment, collaboration.
Those of you who have worked with me, been in the lab, or sat in my classroom, have recognized that I have a passion for teaching and learning in both basic science research and education. This did not begin when I became a professor of pharmacology. It is true to say this passion began in my previous career as a clinical dietician, a career that took me from my native Scotland, to England, and then to the United Arab Emirates. In each of these countries I was able to learn from others and to benefit from teaching in different cultural environments. Eventually, I arrived in the United States where I had the opportunity to further indulge my passion and pursue my current career as a research scientist and teacher in pharmacology.
Along with my love for learning it has been recognized by others that I have a commitment to teaching, a commitment that compels me to continuously improve my learning and teaching capabilities. With that comes a sense of caring and wanting students to succeed both inside and beyond the classroom. To achieve this I seek out new or proven teaching and learning strategies and measure their impact on students’ learning. As a colleague once said of me I am not afraid to experiment. Therefore, thanks for indulging me with my energetic delivery of pharmacology, especially all those alpha- and beta-receptors!
For me to improve as a teacher and life-long learner I recognize it cannot be done alone. A colleague once wrote that I placed great emphasis on collaboration. To me that collaboration includes creating multidisciplinary teaching and learning environments within and across Departments of MCPHS, and with outside higher education institutions. Moreover, this award would not have been achievable without the collaboration of my students and colleagues.
Finally, and most importantly, my heartfelt congratulations to the class of 08 on achieving your PharmD, or BS in Nursing: and I wish you all the very best in your careers and hope you will nurture your own passions, commitments and collaborations in the years to come.
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