Multiple Awards Success for QMES in QMUL Educational Awards

The 2020 Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) Outstanding Contribution Award Ceremony was held online recently. President andPrincipalProfessor Colin Bailey and Vice-Principal (Education) Professor Stephanie Marshall presentedandannounced the winners.Many teachers from Queen Mary EngineeringSchool(QMES) have won multiple awards.

Theannual awards include the Education Excellence Awards and the President and Principal's Prizes, whichrecogniseexcellence in teaching and learner support at an institutional level, includingendeavourbeyond the classroom or behind the scenes. Individuals and teams arerecognisedfor identifying an issue or area for improvement or innovation. This year’s awardsrecognisethe incredible effort and innovation in adapting to a blended learning offer in record time. 

More than 100 colleagues tuned in for these annual awards.QMES teachers Faith Nightingaleand Maria Romero-Gonzalez received the Education Excellence Awards.Meanwhile,Maria Romero-Gonzalez, AndrewSpowageand Gabriel Cavalli, jointly with their London colleague,FolashadeAkinmolayan-Taiwo, won the very prestigious President and Principal's Prize.

FaithNightingale receivedan Education Excellence Award for her workon creating a unique materials library with the second-year students in the Queen Mary Engineering School (QMES) and embedding this work in the Personal Development Planning 2 curriculum that she leads. This projectisseen as the focal point of QMES.

Faith Nightingale and Maria Romero-Gonzalez, jointly with QMUL colleagues fromother programmeswere furtherrecognisedwith another Education Excellence Award for their Common Ground Project. This project promoted collaboration of QMES andotherprogrammestudents by creating videos that focused on materials for biomedical applications. You can see the winning videos here:https://www.sems.qmul.ac.uk/china/ictl/event/event1/

Thisyear, one of the President and Principal Prizes was awarded to the Teaching & Learning Team for the School of Engineering and Materials Science, who are Dr Maria Romero-González, DrFolashadeAkinmolayan-Taiwo, Dr Gabriel Cavalli and Dr AndrewSpowage.

At the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic in UK, based on the teaching experience in QMES, the teamhave created, implemented and delivered a 10-week training course for all academic staff in their School during the transition to blended learning during a very stressful time. They made a huge effort to deliver high-quality sessions for academics.

QMUL PresidentandPrincipal, Prof. Colin Bailey, also highlighted how the impact of their work has been evident in the quality and readiness of online learning in the School and it has transcended the School, having an impact in the Faculty and the University. The team were invited to give a talk at the 2020 Advanced Higher Education Online Curriculum symposium and have engaged in discussions for using this model with other UK Universities.

One month ago, the British Business Awards (BBA) 2020 were held in Shanghai. The new British Ambassador to China, Caroline Wilson CMG attended and addressed the ceremony.TheAwardsrecognisethe institutions and people who make the brilliant contribution toChina-UKtrade and collaboration. QMUL was nominated for the Education Institutional Partnership of the Year Award, whichrecognisedthe positive development of QMESwithregards to the cooperation and student cultivationsince it was established 5 years ago and showed the expectation for its impact in theChina-UK collaboration.

LiketheAmbassador Caroline Wilsonsaid, “2020 is a challenging year for all and in this context, it is more important than ever for China and UK to join hands and further consolidate and deepen partnership for win-win cooperation.”

Hopethe next Spring coming soon!

（图为Faith Nightingale）

（图为Dr. Maria Romero-Gonzalez）

（图为Dr.GabrielCavalli）

（图为Dr. AndrewSpowage）