Congratulations to the six Arts faculty members who have received the 2024-25 Killam Teaching Prize and the three Arts Graduate Teaching Assistants recognized with the Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award.
Get to know the recipients and discover what these prestigious awards mean to them.
Killam Teaching Prize
The Killam Teaching Prize is awarded annually to faculty nominated by students, colleagues and alumni in recognition of excellence in teaching.
Dr. Evan Mauro
Lecturer, Coordinated Arts Program & Law and Society
Dr. Evan Mauro’s teaching uses techniques from community engaged learning, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy with a handful of interconnected outcomes in mind: have students learn research by doing it; have students do non-extractive, reciprocity-minded research; inspire students with the brilliance of diverse modes of knowledge-making and world-making; be a co-creator of knowledge with students; practice accountability to each other and to the communities they are learning with and about. With collaborators in the Making Research Accessible Initiative, Evan has created a platform for students to publish multimedia knowledge exchange outputs on a community-facing web resource for Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, offering accessible forms of research to an over-researched, under-resourced inner city neighbourhood.
On winning this award, Dr. Mauro shares: “What an incredible honour to receive a Killam Teaching Prize. It represents a few things to me: it’s proof that students appreciate radical inclusivity and decolonial initiatives, it’s an affirmation of community-engaged learning methods, and it’s institutional validation that contract faculty, who are often overlooked, do meaningful work here at UBC. I’m so grateful to colleagues and especially my students for supporting this nomination.
Dr. Danielle Wong
Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literatures & Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program
Dr. Danielle Wong’s research and teaching interests focus on the intersections between race, empire, and “new” technology. Her pedagogical aim is to foster learning environments where students can develop methods of critical analysis that allow them to interrogate systems and conditions that structure their everyday lives, and to envision alternatives. Informed by the political and scholarly genealogies of critical ethnic studies, critical race theory, and cultural studies, her teaching foregrounds the histories, knowledge, and cultural expressions of people of colour and minoritized communities.
Dr. Wong shares, “I’m so honoured to receive this prize because it reflects the opportunities I’ve had to work with dedicated and brilliant students. Many of the most meaningful conversations that I’ve participated in have occurred in the classroom, where I am reminded that thinking with others is both urgent and life-giving.”
Dr. JP Catungal
Assistant Professor, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
Dr. JP Catungal is an interdisciplinary scholar of critical geography and feminist and queer of colour theorizing. He has taught in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice and the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration studies program for ten years. As a first generation, queer and racialized academic from a working-class migrant family, JP is intimately familiar with how alienating and elitist universities can be. His goal as an educator is to make teaching and learning spaces more equitable. He does so by deliberately centering historically marginalized communities’ knowledges in curricula and by bringing organizers, artists and performers as interlocutors and collaborators into his classrooms. Some of his key contributions to GRSJ and ACAM curricula include a studio course on community engaged research, as well as courses on queer of colour worldmaking, and Asian Canadian representation and cultural production.
On what winning this prize means to him, Dr. Catungal had this to say: “This prize means everything to me. It is not lost on me that the current political and institutional climate makes equity-focused teaching and learning challenging and thus even more necessary. Being able to keep learning alongside students, colleagues and community members is an absolute gift, especially in these times. “Maraming salamat” (many thanks) to my teachers and to those whose courage and dedication make GRSJ and ACAM sites of radical hope, joy, and community. The work continues.”
Dr. Kathleen Currie Hall
Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
Dr. Hall has been teaching Linguistics at UBC since 2012. Her area of specialty is phonology, which is often described as the study of sound patterns of languages, but also includes similar formational patterns in sign languages. Sign languages are Dr. Hall’s focus, and she has worked to bring them in to the linguistics curriculum at UBC, both through specialized courses and through incorporating them more systematically into generalized courses.
Dr. Hall also has a penchant for supporting student learning, developing course structures that tap into known ways of helping students learn and retain material through active retrieval practice. Her approach to teaching and learning is interactive, requiring students to be engaged in their own education, but also meeting them wherever they are and helping them achieve their goals. She recognizes that learning is hard work and wants students to embrace that challenge and feel supported in taking it on.
Dr. Hall shares, “My most rewarding feedback from students is when they tell me they feel more confident in their own abilities after taking my course. I couldn’t be happier to receive the Killam Teaching Prize, because it means that my students and colleagues think that my strategies are effective, which is always my goal in the classroom.”
Dr. Olena Morozova
Assistant Professor, Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies
A Ukrainian faculty member who joined UBC following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Dr. Olena Morozova has actively contributed to amplifying Ukrainian voices and fostering understanding of Ukraine’s cultural and political realities. She developed and taught Beginner and Elementary Ukrainian language courses using the Action-Oriented Approach that prioritizes learner agency, real-world tasks, and collaborative learning. She has also designed and delivered Anglophone content courses that center Ukrainian perspectives within broader explorations of Slavic cultures, challenging inherited imperial narratives. Her teaching philosophy is grounded in the conviction that learners are active agents in their own knowledge-making, not passive recipients of information. Her pedagogy promotes student engagement, critical inquiry, and meaningful participation, cultivating a classroom environment where intellectual curiosity and inspiration thrive.
On winning this award, Dr. Morozova has this to say: “I’m truly honoured by this award and accept it as a tribute to my students, CENES colleagues, and the resilient Ukrainian people whose language and stories I share at UBC—a university committed to equity, justice, and academic excellence. This recognition inspires me to keep teaching with purpose and heart.”
Dr. Simon Lolliot
Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Psychology & Chair, Vantage One Arts Program
Dr. Simon Lolliot is known internationally for his efforts in designing, promoting, and studying open educational resources that integrate evidence-based pedagogical best practices to enhance student motivation and support long-term learning. His efforts in this area have saved students over $400,000, and his leadership has earned him UBC’s OER Champion designation (2019–2024) and an international H5P Award for pedagogical innovation. Beyond his own courses, he co-organizes an H5P symposium that empowers educators to create their own interactive components for use in teaching. Simon’s teaching practice centers on building engaging, inclusive learning environments where critical thinking and curiosity take priority. By integrating interactive experiments into his lectures, he makes abstract psychological concepts tangible, with the goal of enabling students to apply their knowledge from the classroom to real-world problems.
Dr. Lolliot shares, “When I think back on the people who had the greatest impact on my life, they were all educators. I strive to have that same kind of impact on my students. Receiving this award feels like recognition that I’m on the right path toward making a difference in their lives.”
Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
Each year, UBC honours Graduate Teaching Assistants with the Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, recognizing their excellence in teaching and the high regard they earn from students and supervisors.
Holly Bergeron-Dumaine
Ph.D. student, School of Music
Holly sees the purpose of postsecondary education as helping students build their capacity to grow, empowering them to exercise their own agency. One of her faculty supervisors has noted that they have never seen a teaching assistant whose teaching could stimulate such excitement from faculty, staff, and students. Her exemplary dedication to her development as a teacher is reflected in her participation in numerous CTLT teaching trainings, her role as a CTLT Graduate Student Workshop Facilitator, and her creation of a teaching assistant training program for the School of Music.
Johanna Mickelson
Ph.D. student, Department of Psychology
Johanna anchors her teaching in nurturing collaboration, promoting active participation, critical thinking, professionalism, and a commitment to her own continuous development. Through this, she cultivates a supportive yet challenging environment where students feel empowered. Student feedback affirms her success, with one student sharing that she not only helped them achieve academic success but also “taught me to believe in myself.” Another student said, “I hope one day to make the same impact in someone’s life as she has had on mine.”
Robyn Peers
Ph.D. student, Department of English Language and Literatures
Robyn seeks to cultivate academic communities of care through collaboration and compassion. One faculty supervisor expressed how Robyn made their course better, while another extolled her as the epitome of graduate teaching excellence. As the Department’s TA mentor, she organizes the TA Workshop series and facilitates workshops, serving as a role model for other graduate TAs. Students rave about how Robyn makes class exciting, provides detailed, personalized feedback, and truly impacts their learning.
