October 6, 2005 Source: University of Toronto:
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/051006-1686.asp TVO's Best Lecturer competition heats up Professors take to the airwaves Oct. 8 and 29
Oct 6/05
by Michah Rynor (about) (email) As the TVO website says, "The race tightens." The competition to find Ontario’s best university lecturer is now down to 10 finalists, and two of them -- University Professor Michael Collins of civil engineering and Megumi Harada, a post-doctoral fellow in mathematics -- are from U of T. Last fall, the TVO lectures program Big Ideas initiated the first of what is hoped will be an annual search for Ontario’s best lecturers. A three-judge panel created a shortlist of 30 professors from 258 nominations by 359 students and faculty members across Ontario and 10 U of T professors made the cut. The top 30 provided a taped lecture and bio after agreeing to the competition. The lectures were evaluated by a prestigious three-person jury made up of Bronwyn Drainie, editor of the The Literary Review of Canada, Robert Fulford, journalist and author, and playwright and actor Andrew Moodie, and the list was cut to 10 finalists. Beginning Oct. 8, the finalists will be profiled in pairs over a five-week period. The top 10 now lecture before a live audience and viewers will be able to register a vote following each competition via TVO’s website at tvo.org/bigideas or by telephone at 1-866-281-3536. Viewers will be asked to grade each lecturer on clarity and coherence, energy and performance and confidence and authority, assigning marks from zero to 100. Voters must cast ballots between 2:55 p.m. on the day of each lecture and noon the following Monday. The lecturer who receives the highest average score will receive a $10,000 scholarship for her or his university sponsored by TD Meloche Monnex Insurance. Collins kicks off the series Oct. 8, along with Professor Warren Thorngate of Carlton’s psychology department. Standing in the wings, so to speak, is U of T’s other hopeful, Harada, who is paired with Professor Michael Persinger of Laurentian’s psychology department Oct. 29. "I’m surprised and pleased," said Harada, who says she isn’t nervous in the least as her moment in the spotlight draws closer. "It’s satisfying to know that at least some of my students appreciate the energy that I put into creating a friendly, conversational environment. In particular, it was a pleasure to see a large number of my former women students come to my recent public lecture. Having female role models in science and mathematics was hugely important to me as an undergraduate." The competition, which saw U of T garner a third of the names on the shortlist, is TVO’s way of knowing "which lecturers are able to open and engage students because they inspire and because they are memorable as great performers," according to their website. Collins admits that he was "somewhat nervous" when giving the initial videotaped lecture that earned him a berth on the list. "I am not used to lecturing with two big cameras staring at me," he said. "However, one needs the adrenalin running to give a good lecture so I hope it did not detract from my performance." Collins’ lecture Oct. 8 is entitled In Search of Excellence and is intended to convey what it means to be an engineer. "I traditionally give this as the last lecture in my first-year engineering science course," Collins said. "I first saw the list when it had been cut down to about 100 and was impressed by the range of subjects and I recognized quite a few of the names. At that stage I did not think I had more than a 10 per cent chance of making the final 10 so I was very pleased and somewhat humbled to be given the chance to have my lecture televised." Along with U of T, the top 10 professors represent the universities of York, Waterloo, Carlton, Laurentian and Ryerson. "I’m aiming at another lecture series in the near future," said Big Ideas producer and originator Wodek Szemberg. "I mean what’s not to like? Both students and professors have said wonderful things about the competition and it addresses the fact that there was a growing divide between university professors and popular culture with academics not having as much presence in the culture at large. So certainly one of the purposes of our show is to be able to feature academics who are market-friendly, who are open, interested and interesting and want to be heard and who want to speak in an intelligible way. "What’s especially interesting is that we have a mathematician, a civil engineer and a physicist who are not in the social sciences but in the so-called harder sciences who can speak to a wider audience."
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