Education

Lecturer of the year

Who is your favorite?

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Ten lecturers are battling it out for the title of RUG lecturer of the year 2018. On Wednesday, 30 January, they will each teach a ten-minute class, after which a jury comprised of lecturers and students elects the winner. Who are these people? What makes them so good that their own faculty nominated them? And who do you think should win?
By Sisi van Halsema and Joas de Jong / Translation by Sarah van Steenderen / Photo’s Elmer Spaargaren

 

Andrew Irving

Theology and religious studies

Before he started at the RUG in 2016, Irving worked for several universities in Canada and the US. He teaches subjects like material religion, the sacred image and religion, and ritual and liturgy.

Innovation

Irving likes to integrate technological tools into his teaching. ‘Last week I had an expert on Meso-American archaeology and religious imagery live-broadcast into my class “The Sacred Image”. It was exciting to speak live to someone in the area, and for him to answer live questions from students.’

Most memorable class

‘In a course I was teaching a few years back in New York City (on why and how people converted to Christianity around the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity), I wanted to underline some of the difficult expectations placed on people preparing for baptism. The Scissor Sister’s song “Let’s Have a Kiki” had just come out, and so I said “It is not as if getting ready to be baptized is like having a kiki!” After a silence, someone said: “What’s a kiki?” Astounded that I happened to know a pop-culture reference they did not, I showed them the videoclip in the break. The next class, they set up the room with lights and streamers before the class. I came in, they turned on the lights, threw streamers, played the music – and cried “Let’s have a kiki!”’

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Dirk Slotboom

Science and Engineering

Dirk Slotboom teaches Structural Membrane Technology. He is famous for his first year classes of biochemistry, a subject notorious among students for its high failure rate. Thanks to Slotboom, students now find the subject more bite-sized and less scary.

Also: won the Netherlands Society for Biochemistry Young investigator prize.

Innovation

Slotboom says people often wrongly assume that innovation is always an improvement. ‘Sometimes it’s good to look back: aren’t there some things that we used to do better back in the days?’ So he started using old-school chalkboards again to explain the most complicated matters. ‘At the same time, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all-method’. For this reason it is good to use a variety of educational pathways within one curriculum.’

Most memorable class

‘It is fulfilling to hear students say: ‘this was actually pretty interesting,’ after a biochemistry lecture, especially because at times there is a lot of despair in the beginning.’

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Geke Schuurman

Behavioural and Social Sciences

Geke Schuurman worked as a high school teacher for years, and still does. In addition to her work at the RUG and Rsg De Borgen, she provides training sessions at other schools, research universities, and universities of applied sciences, as well as at conferences in the Netherlands and abroad. Also: she works as a music teacher at a high school.

Innovation

Schuurman sees every student as an individual. ‘I want to focus on interacting with students. I like to challenge them to think about what they’re doing in university, the work they’re doing on their courses, and what motivates their choices.’

Most memorable class

She mainly enjoys the classes where she can showcase what is expected of teachers in the real world. ‘I get to explain what I do, why I do it, and how other people can use this. I use literature as a foundation.’

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Han Thomas Adriaenssen

Philosophy

After graduating with honours in both philosophy and Italian at the RUG, Han Thomas Adriaenssen got his PhD with honours in 2013. He is also a member of Young KNAW. And he has been elected lecturer of the year for his faculty five times already.

Innovation

Adriaenssen wouldn’t necessarily call himself innovative. He is passionate about his work and tries to make philosophy compelling and accessible – though does lose himself in it, occasionally. ‘A few years ago I was teaching the same introductory class three times a week, and I realised that I was making my explanations increasingly difficult because I thought the students would understand it.’

Most memorable class

Adriaenssen always looks forward to the introductory classes about his area of expertise, medieval philosophy. It was while teaching late medieval cognitive theory that he discovered new material for his latest, award-winning book. ‘My students inspired me to word certain things differently. It’s nice to still be able to learn from the students’, he says, laughing.

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Hans ter Haar

Law

Hans ter Haar studied notarial law in Nijmegen. He worked as a junior civil-law notary in Markelo for five years, and held the same position in Enschede for one year. He started at the RUG sixteen years ago and got his PhD in minors and their property. He teaches private law and notarial law.

Also: he draws illustrations for the student almanac and posters.

Innovation

‘Over the past few years, personal contact between students and lecturers has decreased because we’ve made classes available through live-streams’, says Ter Haar. ‘Sometimes only a third of students show up.’ To combat this, he tries to go see his students in person whenever they organise something, or when they are having drinks. ‘For me, being a lecturers doesn’t stop when the lecture or seminar ends.’

Most memorable class

He loves classes that allow him to combine research and education. ‘Knowledge is an ever-expanding entity, which means classes are always changing.’ In his classes, Ter Haar uses his own cartoons as illustrations. He thinks the students appreciate this.

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Marc Kramer

Economics and Business

Marc Kramer first came to Groningen as a student of business economics. After a brief stint at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, he came back to Groningen to teach subjects in the field of Behavioural and Corporate Finance and to research investor behaviour. Het teaches Housing Markets & Real Estate.

Innovation

I am very pleased about the use of an online practice tool where students can prepare the lectures at home. I analyse the results and adapt the material for the lectures accordingly. In this way, lecture time is used far more effectively: we only discuss the information students actually need.

Most memorable class

‘I developed a lecture series for a third year bachelor course: ‘Behavioural Corporate Finance’. It is one of the most fun courses to give; students present and debate articles and cases in small-scale seminars. The course gets really good feedback. Sometimes students even applaud at the end of a lecture.’

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Marco Versluis

Medical Sciences

Marco Versluis is a gynaecologist and obstetrician. He teaches about everything that has to do with pregnancy, the hormonal cycle, contraceptives, and sexual health. He’s also involved in the learning community ‘Global Health.’

Also: he trains surgeons in Sierra Leone.

Innovation

‘Communication is not something you learn from a book’, says Versluis. ‘We have a lot of activities to develop competencies like this. For example: our medical knowledge is always changing, so it is impossible to memorise every new fact. So we introduced a ‘study line’ to help students adapt medical treatment to individual circumstances. I developed an e-learning program for this as well, to give the students a better toolbox for solving medical problems.’

Most memorable class

Versluis: ‘It is hard to pinpoint the ‘best lecture’, but sometimes I have great conversations with students. I like to switch break up serious material with the occasional joke, but the biggest compliment you can get is when a full room is listening in silence.’

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Maria Ioannou

University College Groningen

Ioannou is from Cyprus, where she studied social psychology. She did her PhD at the University of Oxford and then discovered Groningen because of a friend who worked here. She teaches social sciences.

Also: is an active member of local refugee organisation, Shelter City Groningen.

Innovation

Ioannou creates a ‘safe space’ for her students to have productive discussion. She prefers small classes, where the threshold for speaking up is lower. She also embraces ambiguity – ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers are never clear-cut. ‘I encourage people not to hold on too much to what is ‘politically correct’. An example is the lecture where we discuss ‘Black Piet.’ It is interesting to see how a mixture of Dutch and international students engage in this debate.’

Most memorable class

‘I remember once in the UK, I gave a lecture on love and attraction’, says Ioannou, ‘it was to twenty-year-olds, they loved the topic and were very much into it. Even though it was a big auditorium, I think it was just the right time to give this kind of lecture to this kind of people, who were ready to love and ready to be attracted.’ At the time she gave this lecture, Ioannou was only 24.

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Mark van Duijn

Spatial Sciences

Mark van Duijn studied economics in Amsterdam, interned at the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, and worked as a consultant in Paris, before moving back to Amsterdam. After his master, he studied where university graduates prefer to settle down (he himself lives in Leeuwarden) and currently focuses on the ‘locational behaviour’ of companies and the economic value of cultural heritage. Het teaches Housing Markets & Real Estate.

Innovation

‘Geographers and urban planners see research methods in a completely different way, and they’re critical of quantitative methods. I use illustrative examples to try to showcase the power of quantitative methods and techniques in their own field’, says Van Duijn.

Most memorable class

Van Duijn is proud of his classes on quantitative methods and techniques for geographers and urban planners, because he knows how to make his students love the hard parts of the curriculum. ‘When I see that my students are beginning to understand and realise the point of quantitative methods and techniques, I’m a happy man.’

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Pablo Valdivia Martin

Arts

Valdivia studied in Granada and Madrid and has a master’s degree in European literature and Theatre. Before he started at the RUG in 2016, he was a senior lecturer of Spanish literature in Amsterdam. He also worked in England at the University of Nottingham and the Cambridge Foundation Villiers Park. He teaches European Culture and Literary Arts.

Innovation

Valdivia utilises modern teaching technique, such as the interactive presentation program Mentimeter. He introduced Perusall at the university, a program that tracks the active reading time of students as they study. The idea is to help students better prepare for class, while also allowing him to see whether students understand the material and what he should focus on in class.

Pablo: Valdivia Martin didn’t want to be interviewed for this article. The information above was provided by the election organisation and taken from his LinkedIn page.

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