KPU interdisciplinary instructor wins B.C. teaching award

Kwantlen Polytechnic University interdisciplinary instructor Lee Beavington was recognized by the British Columbia Teaching and Learning Council (BCTLC) for his outstanding commitment to students in higher education. 

Beavington received a 2025 West Coast Teaching Excellence Award, which celebrates excellence in post-secondary teaching.

“Disbelief was the first thing and then a lot of joy came in as well,” he says. “I also have a lot of gratitude for the folks who made it possible.” 

Beavington credits Leeann Waddington, associate vice-president of Teaching and Learning at KPU, for championing his work, as well as mentors like creative writing instructor Ross Laird and Celeste Snowber, a professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University.

Beavington’s teaching journey has spanned 23 years at KPU. 

“I knew how to listen really well and I knew how to be prepared, but I was stuck in teaching the way I was taught,” he says. “Even though I was a good listener, I don’t think I was really listening to how students would best learn or how we could co-create the learning environment together.” 

Receiving the award, he says, feels like “a lovely validation” as an educator.

Beavington was presented with KPU’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2024, which contributed to his nomination for the BCTLC honour. 

“It’s an acknowledgement that student-centred learning matters,” he says.  

Allowing students to contribute to the learning process by putting them in the driver’s seat, while ensuring what they are learning is relevant and meaningful, is the aim of student-centred learning, he says. 

“When it’s relevant and meaningful, suddenly the motivation, the engagement … the grades, and GPA all go up, because suddenly it matters to them.”

Beavington hopes the recognition will lead to future collaborations and interdisciplinary partnerships within and outside of the institution. 

Last year, Beavington created an inquiry-based learning resource for the Learning Commons, which allowed students to follow their own interests, passions, and ideas to work on a project that was important to them. 

“The big thing I’ve learned is that community building is number one,” he says. “Having that relationship, that sense of trust, that has to come first for all the other stuff.” 

In spring this year, Beavington also co-taught the Indigenous Perspectives in Biology course with Anthony Fernandes, a faculty member in the Indigenous studies department at KPU.

Beavington is currently working on creating a website on place-based learning through an Indigenous lens for the Learning Commons at KPU, in consultation with his Indigenous colleagues. 

He is also co-editing Poetic Inquiry Atlas, Volume 2: Poetry as Environmental Geography, a book about how we can use poetry in teaching and research to connect to the land, with researcher, poet, and educator Adam Vincent. 

“In my experience, I’ve come across a lot of folks and some of them are what we might call gatekeepers,” he says. “When I became a faculty member and got a PhD, suddenly I was afforded a lot of privilege, a lot of power, and those who are gatekeepers tend to hold on to that power and limit what others can do.”

Beavington says this is why he had vowed to himself to make sure that he was a “door opener” when he became a faculty member. 

In 2012, Beavington says he submitted a story to The Runner about re-evaluating his role as an educator at a time when he began to realize how education could look different. 

“It took a long time for me to realize I could be a different kind of educator.”