SEI Scholars Win Teaching Awards
SEI-based Reader in Politics Dr Dan Hough, and doctoral student and associate tutor Amy Busby, have both won teaching prizes in the 2012 University of Sussex awards, for established and early career staff respectively. This follows on from last year when the Sussex Department of Politics, where many of the core faculty who teach on SEI's Masters programmes are based, were awarded a Sussex team teaching prize following a nomination from the student body; and Dr Hough’s earlier success in winning a national award by the Political Studies Association (PSA) for teaching excellence.
In his statement supporting Dr Hough’s nomination, Head of the Politics Department Paul Taggart - himself a one-time PSA national teaching award winner - said that ‘Dan sets…an impossibly high standard of energy, commitment and engagement with his topics and his students. He is profoundly successful in his teaching…Students find Dan to be accessible, challenging and committed…He always takes on teaching with enthusiasm whether or not it is his core research agenda.’ Professor Taggart drew particular attention to Dr Hough’s teaching on a Research Skills and Methods course, ‘without doubt the most difficult course to teach’ which ‘he makes a success…(through being) innovative, energetic and forward looking’.
Amy Busby was nominated by one of her Politics undergraduate students who said that Amy, delivers ‘stimulating, challenging and inspiring teaching, uses innovative approaches which do make a difference to student learning, has recognition and support of student diversity, has effective organisation, management and delivery of courses and offers support and feedback to students on their progress and development’. Writing in support of Amy Busby’s nomination, Professor Taggart described her as ‘one of the very best of our groups of Associate Tutors’ who has ‘taught on a range of courses and…always had a strong sense of professionalism and quality in teaching.’
This brings the total number of teaching awards for SEI-linked faculty in Sussex Politics Department to seven, which includes four national prize-winners members. In addition to Professor Taggart and Dr Hough, in recent years SEI-based faculty members Professor Aleks Szczerbiak and Professor Tim Bale have all been awarded the PSA annual prize for outstanding teaching in political science.
