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 that fosters her students’ learning, health and well-being. She does this so well that she has won a 2019 SFU Excellence in Teaching Award.

One of Tucker’s key teaching strategies is to create a sense of community in her classrooms. To do this, 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.

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.

Tucker joined SFU in 2005, when FHS was still in its infancy, and she has since 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 she brings 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,” says Bubela.

Tucker also plays an integral role in teaching and mentoring first-year FHS students taking HSCI 130 (Foundations of Health Science), a mandatory first-year course.

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

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.”

Many students, both past and present, praise her for “maintaining a welcoming and open space for both students and her teaching assistants” and for “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.”