THE500H Teaching in Higher Education
Guest Lecturers’ Bios
Fall & Winter 2007-08
Kenneth Bartlett
Director, Office of Teaching Advancement
Ken Bartlett is Professor of History and Renaissance Studies who has been teaching at the University of Toronto since 1978. In
addition to his scholarly books and articles, he has produced teaching texts, videos and readers, as well as translations and editions of
primary sources for classroom use. He was awarded the Victoria University Excellence in Teaching Award in 1993, the SAC/APUS
Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2000, the Faculty of Arts and Science Outstanding Teaching Award in 2003 and in 2005 the
prestigious national 3M Teaching Fellowship. In 2006 he was recognized as one of the inaugural recipients of the President's Teaching
Award at the University of Toronto. Prof. Bartlett was recently awarded one of the Province of Ontario’s 10 LIFT Awards for college
and university faculty.
John Browne
Woodsworth College
John Browne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in the Faculty of Medicine
and a member of the Academic Staff of the Faculty of Arts and Science. He has served as Principal of Innis College and is currently
Acting Principal of Woodsworth College. Professor Browne has also acted as Provost's Advisor on Undergraduate Education and the
Provost's Advisor on Residence Development. After many years in academic administration during which he always taught at least
one course each year, Prof. Browne returned full-time to the classroom in 2001-2002. He is currently teaching a first-year seminar
(which has a dedicated web site and about which he will speak). Until July 1, 2007, when he became Acting Principal, Prof. Browne
was the Director of his Department's MSc and PhD program.
Megan Burnett
Assistant Director, Office of Teaching Advancement/Teaching Assistants' Training Program
Megan Burnett has taught at the University of Toronto for ten years--as a PhD Candidate and sessional instructor in the Department of
French and as a former graduate student Director of the Teaching Assistants' Training Program. In her previous role at the TATP,
Megan designed the teaching dossier practicum component of the TATP Certificate Program, using knowledge gleaned from research
on dossiers and her own experience on University hiring committees. Megan currently runs the newly-expanded Teaching Assistants'
Training Program, serving as Assistant Director of the Office of Teaching Advancement.
Tony Chambers
Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Tony Chambers is a member of the Theory and Policy Studies in Education faculty at the University of Toronto in the Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Students in Postsecondary Education,
and serves as Associate Vice-Provost, Students at the University of Toronto. Tony served for 17 years as an administrator and faculty
member at several higher education institutions including Michigan State University, University of Iowa, University of Missouri-St.
Louis, University of Florida and Illinois State University. Tony’s professional interests include students learning and development,
the influence of spirituality in higher education, and the social, cultural and civic role of higher education.
David Harrison
Professor, Dept. of Physics
David M. Harrison is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto. Originally a High Energy Physicist,
he decided the question of how students learn was much more interesting than quarks or strings some time ago. He has received a
teaching award from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations for 'outstanding contributions to university
teaching'.
Laurie Harrison
Director, Academic Technology, OISE
Laurie Harrison has been involved in a number of projects involving accessible Web design, research into accessible
authoring tools, and web-based distance education. Laurie previously acted as Education and Outreach Coordinator for
UofT's Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, advocating for inclusive design practices in development of educational
resources. Her background includes expertise in accessible web design and instructional technology for the Internet.
Laurie currently holds the position of Director, Academic Technology at OISE where she coordinates a range of
initiatives related to online learning and resource development.
Linda Hutcheon
Professor, English and Comparative Literature
Linda Hutcheon is University Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the author of 9 books (and editor of 4) on cultural
and literary theory. She was the winner of the Northrop Frye Award for Teaching and Research in 1998. She has also done
collaborative research--with over 300 scholars around the world (on two large comparative literary history projects) and, in a more
controlled fashion, with her partner, Dr. Michael Hutcheon (Faculty of Medicine), on the intersections of medical history and... opera!
They have published three books, the latest called “Opera: The Art of Dying” (Harvard University Press, 2004), and are currently
studying age, creativity, and the "late style" of operatic composers.
Rob Irish
Director, Language Across the Curriculum, Applied Science and Engineering
Robert Irish is the Director of the Language Across the Curriculum program in Applied Science and Engineering at U of T. This
program, which he started in 1995, works with 28 engineering courses each year to help engineering students communicate better
orally and in writing. The part of the program most familiar to graduate students is the very popular grad course, "Communication for
Engineers." His research interests include Renaissance drama, contemporary British literature, and writing pedagogy. He is currently
overseeing a multi-year project examining how written feedback impacts student writing.
Tony Key
Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics
After pursuing research in experimental Particle Physics, I switched in mid-career to the fields of communication and education,
which were more consistent with my interests and training in psychotherapy. Recently retired, I continue to teach a large first year
Physics course, a course in communication for Physics students, and a variety of workshops on teaching at the tertiary level, problem
solving, and psychotherapy. I am a recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Gold
Medal for Excellence in Teaching from the Canadian Association of Physicists.
W. Brock MacDonald
Director, Academic Writing Centre, Woodsworth College
W. Brock MacDonald is a Senior Lecturer at Woodsworth College, University of Toronto, where he is the Director of the
Academic Writing Centre and teaches in the Academic Bridging and First-Year Seminar programs. A tutor and instructor
at U of T since 1989, he has taught in the Faculties of Arts and Science, Pharmacy, and Applied Science and Engineering,
developing a wide variety of writing courses and writing support programs for both undergraduate and graduate students
and for working professionals. Besides his duties at Woodsworth, he is currently serving as a faculty resource and
consultant in a two-year initiative to enhance the teaching and support of writing in the Department of Geography.
Susan McCahan
Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Susan McCahan was the Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and is an expert in
thermodynamics and reactive flow. She was Course Coordinator for THE500 for several years and has conducted workshops for the
Office of Teaching Advancement. More recently she has been the Course Coordinator for a large (enrolment ~1000) first year course
on engineering design and communication which includes a substantial service-learning component. She has a great deal of interest in
student learning and the ways in which we bring this understanding into teaching practice.
Margaret Procter
University of Toronto Coordinator, Writing Support
Margaret Procter is the University of Toronto Coordinator of Writing Support. She works with 14 writing centres and two writing
programs to help students deal with the challenges of academic and professional writing. Just as importantly, she supports faculty
members in integrating writing into their courses. Her website "Writing at the University of Toronto" receives well over a million hits
a year, about 10% of them to the files advising faculty on designing assignments and responding to student work. She is the co-author
with Margot Northey of the handbook Making Sense, and the co-inventor with Robert Luke of the web-enabled software iWRITE.
Her research interests include the relationship between imitation and originality as seen in both literature and academic writing, and
she is currently engaged in a comparative study of writing instruction in European and North American universities.
Dena Bain Taylor
Director, Health Sciences Writing Centre, University of Toronto
Dena Taylor is the Director of the Health Sciences Writing Centre. This program of writing instruction, which she started in 1995,
fosters writing across the curriculum by working with individual students, faculty, and courses in the Faculties of Dentistry, Nursing,
Pharmacy, Physical Education and Health, Social Work and Medicine. For ten years prior to this, she was an Assistant Professor in
the Department of English. She is the author of Writing in the Health Sciences: A Comprehensive Guide, which is an online
instructional text available to University of Toronto users at www.hswriting.ca. Her current research interests are in writing pedagogy,
though she also publishes on William Blake and is a science fiction and fantasy writer.
Cheryl Shook
Registrar, Woodsworth College
Cheryl Shook is currently the Registrar at Woodsworth College, the largest and most diverse college on the St. George campus. With
over fifteen years experience in registrarial services, she has been called upon to deal with a variety of student issues and behaviour
problems. She has presented and offered workshops on such topics as "Engaging the Challenging Student" and "Dealing with Difficult
Behaviour." She is frequently called upon to give workshops and seminars as part of teaching assistant training programs and
reesidence don training. In addition to her administrative positions, Cheryl has been an instructor in the Academic Bridging Program,
an access program that allows mature individuals with no previous post-secondary education an opportunity to explore university
studies and qualify for admission to the U of T. She has an MA and CTESL from the University of Toronto.
Sandy Welsh
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Sandy Welsh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. She has served as the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in
her department and will be the Acting Chair from Jan.-July 2007. She obtained her PhD in Sociology is from Indiana UniversityBloomington in 1994. She teaches courses on work, organizations and gender. Her current research projects involve a study of
women's experiences with sexual harassment and a study of the professionalization process of complementary and alternative
medicine occupations. Sandy has taught undergraduate classes ranging in size from 30 students to 500. She has won three teaching
awards, including the Faculty of Arts and Science Outstanding Teaching Award.
Irving Zeitlin
Professor, Department of Sociology
Professor Emeritus Irving Zeitlin received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in the fields of Sociology and Anthropology, having
specialized in the history of social and political thought. Awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship, he spent the year
following graduation in Paris, France, studying European social theory. Upon returning to the United States he taught theory at
Indiana University and Washington University in St.Louis, where he also chaired the department.
In 1972, he was recruited by the University of Toronto and appointed chair of the sociology department. He has published twelve
books on social theory and on religion. One of them, titled Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory, has been published
in its seventh edition, and has been in print for 39 years. Zeitlin has also spent a year in England as a visiting lecturer in social theory,
and a year in Japan as a visiting professor studying Japanese religions.
In 1994 he received the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award in recognition of teaching excellence. He is
presently a coordinator of one section of THE500. He continues to teach on a sessional basis in the department of sociology.