Waterloo April 2017

Excellence in Teaching Award

In 2017, the faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo gave me the Excellence in Teaching Award for my work in the classroom. I couldn't have been happier. Also, the award is a beautifully designed glass sculpture by the folks at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery.

GBDA 401: Design Capstone

Team of my students win prestigious RSA award

Royal Society of the Arts (RSA), student design awards, London UK

A team of GBDA students from a design course I co-taught with two colleagues won the top prize at the 2018 RSA Student Design Competition. The students won Best Business Case in the category: Wellbeing at Work for their project "Hungryr", a food delivery platform for long-haul truck drivers, allowing them to maintain a nutritious and balanced diet. Leading designers and industry professionals evaluated the proposals as part of a rigorous process that included face-to-face interviews after anonymous offline shortlisting.

The students are: Alex Mills, Casey Hargreaves, Liz Mirchan-Breckenridge, Katrina Schouten and Stephanie Donovan.

GBDA 320: Global Digital Project

A team of my students win $25,000

WorldVision, Social Innovation Competition, Toronto, Canada

Whenever possible, I like to use outside design and business competitions for the team projects of my courses. This brings a much needed outside component to a university course and provides students with mentors and outside feedback. In 2019, I worked with WorldVision's Social Innovation Challenge and am happy to say that one of my student teams won the first prize!

The students are (left to right): Sylvia Bogdanowicz, Cindy Le, Laura Kraehling, Kristen Fajardo, Amirah Mahomed, and me in the back.