Top national teaching award for Warwick academic
Dr Nicholas Monk, Deputy Director for the University of Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL), has been awarded a prestigious teaching prize by the Higher Education Academy.
Dr Monk has been named as one of this year’s National Teaching Fellows to recognise his excellence in higher education teaching, and support for learning.
As well as convening undergraduate and postgraduate modules in the Department of English, he has led on the development of IATL’s suite of interdisciplinary modules that are designed to be wholly ‘cross-faculty’, meaning any undergraduate student from any department at Warwick can take one or more of the modules. Examples include modules on identity – his own module, and co-taught with Monash – human-animal studies, applied imagination, re-inventing education, and climate change.
Dr Monk also runs workshops across the University faculties for departments as diverse as Chemistry, Business, Theatre, and Sociology. He also works with the Learning and Development Centre on themes such as networking, workshop facilitation, and teaching for creativity. He is supervising PhDs on both American literature and the function of emotional intelligence in business training.
He said: “I’m thrilled to receive this award, of course, but it’s been a collaborative thing, and huge credit should go to my many colleagues without whose support it wouldn’t have been possible, and to the University, more broadly, which has offered me the freedom to experiment. Most importantly though, this couldn’t have happened without Warwick’s seemingly endless supply of outstanding students.”
The successful National Teaching Fellows (NTFs) were chosen from over 180 nominations submitted by higher education institutions across England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Each will receive an award of £10,000 which will be used to support their professional development in teaching and learning or aspects of pedagogy.
Staff were nominated by their institutions and submissions had to show evidence of three criteria: individual excellence, raising the profile of excellence and developing excellence.