02 August 2006

Rising Star

Dr. Catherine Biggs has won a Senate Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, in the category of Rising Stars. She beat off stiff competition to be one of five winners.

The panel was most impressed with the evidence of pro-actively initiating innovative practice which had a positive impact on the learning experience of students. In the first year, Catherine introduced a project-orientated delivery of a core chemical engineering module. Through problems and assigments the students could see a real connection between what they were learning and what they would acutally do as a chemical engineer in the real world. This made the work more exciting and rewarding.

A students said: "the group work and site visits made this course the most interesting during the Semester and reinforced the reasons for me picking this degree course."

Catherine also received the award for her work on a postgraduate pilot study to introduce an educational career development package (RSVP tm) which aims to develop broad graduate attributes valued by employers. One student commented "I feel more confident about the future."