FHS lecturer Rochelle Tucker inspires students by creating community in her classroom

By Clement Woo

With a background in health promotion, Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) Senior Lecturer Rochelle Tucker believes in creating a supportive learning environment to foster her students’ learning, health and well-being. Tucker’s passion and dedication for teaching has earned her the 2019 SFU Excellence in Teaching Award.

The common strategy used in all of Tucker’s classes is to create community. She encourages students to engage with the course material and each other in a variety of ways, including critical discussion, study groups outside of class, group projects and hands-on assignments.

“By creating opportunities for respectful and engaging interaction and recognition, my students and I create opportunities for the construction of knowledge and the construction of community in our classes.” she says.

Some of her community-building initiatives include developing a system for online and anonymous office hours, ensuring daily TA support is available, initiating a potluck rotation for coffee and snacks in early morning seminars, and creating an engagement project that facilitates friendship among first-year students.

Beginning her career at SFU in 2005, when FHS was still in its infancy, Tucker has played a fundamental role in growing the faculty and helping develop its curriculum.

As FHS Dean Tania Bubela notes, Tucker’s dedication to excellence in teaching extends beyond the classroom experiences of her students.

“She is committed to continuously improving the curriculum of all the courses she teaches and recently volunteered to redesign and teach HSCI 307 (Research Methods in Health Sciences), a core course for undergraduate students in the faculty.”

Tucker also plays an integral role in the teaching and mentoring of first year FHS students through the teaching of HSCI 130 (Foundations of Health Science), a mandatory first year course. In a recent course evaluation, one student described Tucker as “one of the most supportive and inspiring people I have ever met. She is constantly encouraging and supporting her students. She has a way of engaging the class in a way I have never experienced.”

Her genuine interest in student learning is reflective in the fact that she actively asks students for feedback and regularly makes an effort to improve her courses by updating the syllabus to reflect current and emerging topics. Through a mixture of mediums, including film, narrative, graphics and readings, she ensures that the main concepts of each course are emphasized in a variety of formats.

Affectionately known as “Dr. Ro,” Tucker is consistently described by her students as being knowledgeable, passionate, enthusiastic, dynamic, approachable, open-minded and insightful, as well as socially committed and community engaged.

Many students, both past and present, praise her for “maintaining a welcoming and open space for both students and her teaching assistants” and “building meaningful connections and guiding students on a personal level.”

“Along with providing us assistance with coursework, Dr. Tucker would spend endless amounts of time providing guidance to students on professional career trajectories, courses and personal challenges,” recalls one of her past students. “Her ability to create a safe learning environment where students could feel at ease enriched my learning experience at SFU and piqued my interest in research.”

When asked to summarize her teaching philosophy, Tucker says she believes that students learn best when they are inspired, engaged and challenged within a supportive environment. Above all, she emphasizes the importance of having fun.

“I value fun, play and exploration in learning and encourage students to create ways to have fun with their classmates.”