2 KPU instructors receive Distinguished Teaching Awards

Two Kwantlen Polytechnic University instructors were recognized at convocation ceremonies last month for exemplary and exceptional teaching. 

Chemistry instructor Catherine Chow was nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award by students for making her courses engaging. Magician-turned-accounting-instructor Alym Amlani was nominated by fellow peers for his engaging teaching style that incorporates magic. 

“It means the world,” Amlani says. “It just really did speak to the support that I got from a lot of students, colleagues, and all the people who supported the application.”

Amlani has worked at KPU since 2010 and says he feels strongly about “edu-tainment,” a teaching strategy that blends education and entertainment. The method was developed over five years in an effort to keep his accounting courses engaging after many courses moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“In class, I do use a lot of storytelling. I do tell a terrible set of dad jokes, [but] I really try to keep everything as entertaining and engaging as possible in the classroom,” says Amlani, who worked as a magician to fund his education. 

While attending a magic competition in Quebec in 2022, he connected with another magician who was using digital tools like Open Broadcaster Software, a cross-platform screencasting and live-streaming application, to make their online Zoom show experiences more engaging. Amlani realized he too could also use these techniques in his virtual classrooms. 

“There’s so much good content being created by really good content creators, both on YouTube, TikTok, or whatever platform you’re on,” he says. 

“If we’re going to be charging top dollar for students to come through our programs, we [have] to make sure our video content but also our in-person delivery is as good. Otherwise, what’s going to keep a student in the classroom if they’re just going to be bored?”

Chow says she wanted to become a journalist in her early years but fell in love with science and chemistry after entering a classroom with a teacher who made the subject interesting. She has been teaching at KPU since 2013 and says it means a lot to her that the initial nomination was started by her students.

“As an instructor, you’re not always aware of the effects that you have on students,” Chow says, adding that students’ nomination letters included stories of them feeling they could understand and enjoy chemistry, something they didn’t feel prior to taking her class. 

“I felt really humbled when I read those,” she says. 

In the classroom, Chow is drawn to the four Rs of Indigenous education — respect, relevance, relationships, and responsibility — as well as a “bidirectional” teaching philosophy where she is open to learning from students while teaching them. 

“Everybody has something to teach somebody else,” she says. “I just happen to know a little bit more chemistry than the average person, so I’m well placed to teach other people chemistry. But my students teach me all sorts of things, too.” 

Chow says she is proud to be a part of helping students who may be weary or apprehensive about chemistry at a time when science is “under attack.”

Many students from the business and arts faculties overcome their hesitation and realize they possess the ability to learn and succeed within the sciences, Chow says, adding that this is the reason she teaches CHEM 1101, an elective course for students not in the Faculty of Science. 

“I hope that I’m encouraging [students] to be curious, ask questions, and to really analyze and critically think about what they’re consuming in their media diets.”