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Celebrating our 2020 winners

In October, over 80 colleagues joined a lunchtime celebration on Teams, hosted by the Academic Development Centre and led by Professor Chris Hughes, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education.


Teaching Excellence winners and commendees

Our 2020 teaching excellence award recipients gave very affirming acceptance speeches discussing their motivations for teaching and their passion for student support.

What inspires them? What do they wish someone had told them when they were starting out? What do they see as the biggest challenges? Meet our staff and postgraduate winners and commendees, and read their interviews.


Butterworth Memorial Award

The Butterworth Memorial Award is a special award for a colleague in the first six years of their academic teaching career and this year’s recipient was Bo Kelestyn, a Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of Student Experience in the Department of Chemistry.

We were delighted to have Lady Butterworth in attendance at the event, who said,

“The event was outstanding: I very much enjoyed seeing and hearing the winners and clearly the University is facing up to the current teaching challenges with efficient good humour. There were many memorable things said by the award recipients, but one of the best was from the statement of a postgraduate student teacher, who said he believed that 'no student should ever be allowed to fall behind'. This phrase should be applied to the teaching of all students.”


Personal Tutoring Awards

We celebrated this year's Personal Tutoring award winners, Nigel Denton (WMG), Tilly Harrison (Centre for Applied Linguistics) and Julie Taylor (Centre for Teacher Education).

Read their interview with one of our student bloggers, about what Personal Tutors can offer to students and how students can make the most of their support.


National Teaching Fellowship

The event also acknowledged the outstanding work of Robin Naylor, who this year was awarded an Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship. The scheme celebrates and recognises individuals who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession in higher education.

Read more about Robin's achievements

About the awards

The Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE) provides an opportunity to celebrate the best teachers at Warwick, nominated by staff and students.

Three types of recognition exist: WATE, WATE PGR (for postgraduates who teach) and the more recent Warwick Awards for Personal Tutoring Excellence (WAPTE).

How to get involved

Nominations for next year's awards will open in the coming months. Look out for more information to follow on insite.

Who has inspired you through their teaching and learning practice and support?