Student success greatest reward for top teacher

The Professional Teaching Fellow, who began tutoring in 2000, has been named as this year’s winner of the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award at the 2019 Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards.

Already hailed as one of the University’s most engaging and innovative teachers, Andrew who has taught Business Systems to more than 20,000 students, was honoured last month with a 2019 Ako Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award worth $20,000, in recognition of his outstanding teaching success.

Adding to his accolades, this week he scooped the country’s top prize at an event hosted by the Minister of Education, the Honourable Chris Hipkins, in Wellington. Presented annually, the prestigious Prime Minister’s Supreme Award is worth $10,000.

The first in his family to attend university, Andrew began teaching part time and is now the Director of the Business Masters Programmes in the Graduate School of Management, where he oversees more than 60 courses a year.

During this time, he developed new ways to motivate both struggling and talented students to learn, taking advantage of technology to improve engagement and assessment practices.

As well as assisting his students to succeed, Andrew has shared his knowledge to empower his colleagues. He helped to design, develop and implement an Educational Technology Hub for University of Auckland staff and helped establish a self-service video recording tool, the One Button Studio, for the wider University.

"My real reward is seeing my students succeed,” says Andrew. “Just last week I got an email from a former student telling me how she had entered a data visualisation competition in the US and won - using the tools and techniques that I taught her. That’s what gives me joy - seeing our students succeed beyond the University,” he says.

Andrew’s previous gongs include Faculty Teaching Excellence Awards in 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2018, University Teaching Excellence Awards in Innovation in 2012, and Leadership in 2018, and a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2018.