Arts faculty members Luisa Canuto, Christine Evans, and Moberley Luger have received the Dean of Arts Educational Leadership and Innovation Award.
The award offers Educational Leadership faculty time to develop innovative approaches to teaching and learning that may not typically be funded through other UBC competitions. Now in its fourth year, this award is open to all Assistant and Associate Professors of Teaching in the Faculty of Arts.
Warmest congratulations to Dr. Canuto, Dr. Evans and Dr. Luger on their awards!
Dr. Luisa Canuto
Associate Professor of Teaching (Italian Studies), Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies
Dr. Canuto plans to lead a project which will provide a clear understanding of the current situation of our UBC language programs, assess effective and acceptable actions, identify possible systemic obstacles, integrate technologies like AI to enhance language learning and teaching, and foster a community of language learners across programs and administrative offices.
More specifically, after collecting and analyzing the enrollment data and trends on different UBC language programs and comparing them with those from similar language programs of other Canadian universities of comparable size, Dr. Canuto will develop ways to increase the visibility of language programs to UBC students, to faculty mentors, advisers and administrators across campus, and build relationships with university constituents about common interests and concerns and the mutual benefit of collaboration. The last phase of the project will instead focus on the impact and possible integration of GenAI in our UBC language classes, and identify evidence supported strategies that could promote productive use of GenAI in language learning.
Dr. Christine Evans
Assistant Professor of Teaching (Cinema Studies), Department of Theatre and Film
The Department of Theatre and Film houses a wide range of scholarly and creative approaches. Dr. Evans’ project will bolster the department’s curricular cohesion and create a transparent public-facing acknowledgement of its identity as an interdisciplinary department. In 2023, Dr. Evans compiled a large-scale report of her own program within the department – Cinema Studies – that sought to harness the program’s growth in a sustainable way by proposing a clear scholarly identity, rethinking existing course offerings, and recommending the creation of new courses that responded to identified student needs and aligned with UBC’s strategic vision.
This initial report’s scope will be significantly expanded to include the entire department, building on the department’s inherently interdisciplinary structure to create a cohesive departmental identity and a transparent structure for all student academic and creative trajectories. The project will research the full complement of departmental programs: Cinema Studies (BA, MA, PhD), Theatre Studies (BA, MA, PhD), Film Production (BFA/MFA), Theatre Production (BFA, MFA in Design, Acting and/or Directing), and the joint MFAs with Creative Writing for Film/Screenwriting and Theatre/Playwriting. Ultimately, this project will identify ways to use department resources more efficiently and invite students to connect with the wider department community. “I’m very excited and honoured to receive this award and am grateful that the Faculty of Arts acknowledges work that doesn’t quite fit within the parameters of TLEF grants and more traditional education- and pedagogy-based awards,” said Dr. Evans.
Dr. Moberley Luger
Associate Professor of Teaching and Chair of the Coordinated Arts Program, Department of English Language & Literatures
Dr. Luger’s project aims to foster linguistic justice at UBC. Linguistic justice takes as its premise that all languages, language varieties, and accents are legitimate and equal. It includes equity for BIPOC, multilingual, and regionally-diverse speakers, as well as for speakers with speech disabilities. To advocate for linguistic justice is to actively reject a kind of discrimination on our campus that, as The President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence notes “is often overlooked or taken lightly.” The project builds on Dr. Luger’s previous work on equitable oral speaking pedagogies (which includes this teaching resource) and her commitment to creating classrooms in which students are not underestimated and penalized for their accents or spoken expression.
