Bozana Zekan wins Certificate for Outstanding Teaching Performance

Florian Aubke, the new Dean of the Undergraduate School, is making a few changes in his new position. One of his first initiatives is to show the faculty how important their teaching is for MU students.

''Our job comprises of two parts, we do research and we get acknowledged by doing excellent research by actually having our work published, but there is seldom recognition for outstanding teaching,'' says Florian. ''Both are equally important for the university. It’s important we do outstanding research, be respected in the academic community, but it’s equally important that we deliver excellent teaching as a service to our students.''

To show a sign of appreciation to faculty members who think about their teaching, invest time into it, and also function as role models for other faculty, he devised the Certificate for Teaching Excellence to recognize these teachers’ performances.

The award will be given out every semester to a faculty member who has excelled at engaging students in the previous semester. The method used to indentify and quantify who has delivered outstanding teaching performance is an assessment of the course evaluations given to students at the end of the semester, and in particular the overall satisfaction with the course. It takes into account that there are different courses that are differently attractive to students (e.g. Study Tours abroad vs. Math and Statistics), but a good teacher can make up for this.

Researcher and Lecturer Bozana Zekan is the first recipient of the Certificate for Outstanding Teaching Performance for her Spring 2015 classes Advertising and Marketing Communication, HR Management and Management Development, and Tourism and Hospitality Business Analysis. She consistently received top marks from her students, ranking number one in nearly all categories.

''This certificate was a really nice surprise!'' says Bozana. ''I love what I do and students can probably sense it. The most important part for me is that they leave my courses knowing how to apply the knowledge I taught them to the real life situations. I put a lot of emphasis on the interactive learning, I challenge them with my questions and they challenge me, which makes the sessions much more interesting. They see that I care about every single individual, be it that I have 100 or only 30 students in the lecture. I hope they continue being happy with my teaching approach!''