Each year, SFU recognizes teaching excellence at the university, choosing three SFU instructors or faculty members to receive $2,000 cash awards. See them all on video at.sfu.ca/XmwBqc.

Exciting. Entertaining. Energetic. These are all words that students use to describe engineering science professor John Jones’ teaching.

And first-year engineering science students say Jones’ teaching is the standard by which they judge all other professors during their years at SFU.

Yet Jones didn’t set out to become a teacher, despite spending an enjoyable two-and-a-half years as headmaster of a small school in Kenya during his 20s. He was intent on researching and creating technology for the developing world.

Instead, he wound up as a staff research engineer at General Motors in Detroit, MI before accepting an associate professorship at SFU in 1988.

“I hadn’t expected to like the teaching, but I found it more rewarding than research,” says Jones, who still likes the excitement of working with young people who have fresh ideas.

“I enjoy teaching first-year students. They come in enthusiastic, with very high expectations.”

To sustain that enthusiasm during first year, when engineering science students primarily study math and science, Jones introduced an engineering-history course that gives students a glimpse of what they can expect from a career in engineering. It’s a popular course, designed to awaken students’ curiosity.

“Unless students have questions, there is no learning,” says Jones. He frequently presents paradoxes with ridiculous conclusions that force the students to re-examine what they think they know.

Students say they appreciate his emphatic lecturing style, his passion for his subject and, most of all, his quirky sense of humour.

“It doesn’t distract from his lectures, it complements them,” says one student nominator. “Students love this. It makes them listen. It makes them smile. Being happy in class stimulates the learning within me.”

The Faculty of Applied Sciences has also recognized Jones with its 2011 Superior Performance in Teaching award.