Teaching fellows

FASS teaching fellows

The primary role of the teaching fellows is to support the continued improvement of undergraduate teaching and graduate training in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). They will work to help address the challenges that instructors face and to communicate solutions across the Faculty, as well as to provide a channel of communication between FASS and higher administrative units that focus on teaching.

The teaching fellows' immediate priorities include leading the effort to create FASS questions for the Student Evaluations of Teaching and Courses and organizing the Cormack awards and symposium. They will also inititate a conversation about the issues most important to instructors in the faculty, with the input of FASS faculty.

They will be seeking advice and feedback on a range of issues, especially including the ways in which FASS can continue to promote the value of its degrees, the means by which the first-year experience of FASS students may be improved, potential ways to support teaching through peer mentoring, and the role of research and pedagogical experimentation in the classroom.

Current teaching fellows

Tiffany Muller Myrdahl

Senior Lecturer, Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Appointed effective January 1, 2020–August 31, 2025

With responsibilities for academically-based community engaged courses, including research on wellness and empowerment strategies for students to enhance student experience.

Learn more

Martin Santamaria

Lecturer, Department of Economics

Appointed effective September 1, 2022–August 31, 2023

Amanda Watson

Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Appointed effective May 1, 2019–August 31, 2023

With responsibilities primarily for the advancement of online and blended learning pedagogies and the CODE transition Pilots.

Learn more

Teaching Assessment Working Group - Reports

The Teaching Assessment Working Group (TAWG) was established by Vice President Academic and Provost Peter Keller in August 2017 to establish an active conversation among faculty at SFU about how we evaluate teaching and learning beyond SETC (Student Evaluation of Teaching and Courses), SFU’s online student evaluation system. The group was asked to provide a set of strategies to value teaching practice and to make recommendations to facilitate consistency, flexibility and robustness of reviews of teaching practice of use to all stakeholders.

Below, are links to the 2019 TAWG Final Report, an SFU-wide faculty survey report and the initial 2017 Teaching Assessment Report. These documents review Simon Fraser University policies on the assessment of teaching, the most current literature on best practices and they examine the views of Tenure and Promotion Committee chairs, teaching award winners, and administrators  at other Canadian universities.