The 2020 Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) Outstanding Contribution Award Ceremony was held online recently. President and Principal Professor Colin Bailey and Vice-Principal (Education) Professor Stephanie Marshall presented and announced the winners. Many teachers from Queen Mary Engineering School (QMES) have won multiple awards.
The annual awards include the Education Excellence Awards and the President and Principal's Prizes, which recognise excellence in teaching and learner support at an institutional level, including endeavour beyond the classroom or behind the scenes. Individuals and teams are recognised for identifying an issue or area for improvement or innovation. This year’s awards recognise the incredible effort and innovation in adapting to a blended learning offer in record time.
More than 100 colleagues tuned in for these annual awards. QMES teachers Faith Nightingale and Maria Romero-Gonzalez received the Education Excellence Awards. Meanwhile, Maria Romero-Gonzalez, Andrew Spowage and Gabriel Cavalli, jointly with their London colleague, Folashade Akinmolayan-Taiwo, won the very prestigious President and Principal's Prize.
Faith Nightingale received an Education Excellence Award for her work on creating a unique materials library with the second-year students in the Queen Mary Engineering School (QMES) and embedding this work in the Personal Development Planning 2 curriculum that she leads. This project is seen as the focal point of QMES.
Faith Nightingale and Maria Romero-Gonzalez, jointly with QMUL colleagues from other programmes were further recognised with another Education Excellence Award for their Common Ground Project. This project promoted collaboration of QMES and other programme students by creating videos that focused on materials for biomedical applications. You can see the winning videos here: https://www.sems.qmul.ac.uk/china/ictl/event/event1/
This year, one of the President and Principal Prizes was awarded to the Teaching & Learning Team for the School of Engineering and Materials Science, who are Dr Maria Romero-González, Dr Folashade Akinmolayan-Taiwo, Dr Gabriel Cavalli and Dr Andrew Spowage.
At the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic in UK, based on the teaching experience in QMES, the team have created, implemented and delivered a 10-week training course for all academic staff in their School during the transition to blended learning during a very stressful time. They made a huge effort to deliver high-quality sessions for academics.
QMUL President and Principal, Prof. Colin Bailey, also highlighted how the impact of their work has been evident in the quality and readiness of online learning in the School and it has transcended the School, having an impact in the Faculty and the University. The team were invited to give a talk at the 2020 Advanced Higher Education Online Curriculum symposium and have engaged in discussions for using this model with other UK Universities.
One month ago, the British Business Awards (BBA) 2020 were held in Shanghai. The new British Ambassador to China, Caroline Wilson CMG attended and addressed the ceremony. The Awards recognise the institutions and people who make the brilliant contribution to China-UK trade and collaboration. QMUL was nominated for the Education Institutional Partnership of the Year Award, which recognised the positive development of QMES with regards to the cooperation and student cultivation since it was established 5 years ago and showed the expectation for its impact in the China-UK collaboration.
Like the Ambassador Caroline Wilson said, “2020 is a challenging year for all and in this context, it is more important than ever for China and UK to join hands and further consolidate and deepen partnership for win-win cooperation.”
Hope the next Spring coming soon!
（Faith Nightingale）
（Dr. Maria Romero-Gonzalez）
（Dr.Gabriel Cavalli）
（Dr. Andrew Spowage）
Writer: Qi Yue & Li Yang, Reviewer: Kong Jie
Source: Queen Mary University of London Engineering School, NPU
