"Arik really cares for his students' success. He is one of the kindest and most understanding instructors I have ever met. He encourages us to ask questions and is really responsive to emails and tries his best to accommodate students needs whether through extensions or setting up time outside class to discuss the class material. His dedication to his courses makes you want to study the material and know it better. He is very easy to talk to and provides really good advice on school and courses but also life in general. Arik's field of research (process mining) is very interesting to me. I am interested in analyzing organizational systems and using data to help organizations make better decisions and process mining falls at the intersection of my interests. "
- Anonymous
"Dan Ryan is something else! He is so energetic and so passionate about his course, it was always a refreshing to attend his classes because they weren't like any other courses i had that semester. It was fun, a bit unstructured and every week there was a new class activity geared to helping us understand the concepts of that week. He is a seasoned pro at teaching and should just teach everything, forever. He is super friendly and approachable and is the person I would reach out to if I were going through a difficult or confusing time. He always has an interesting story to share and is knowledgeable about so many different things, it's amazing!"
- Anonymous
"Professor Dan Ryan has not only made the classes interesting, informative and fun, but has inspired the class to complete weekly assignments in a creative way that is challenging, yet fun (mind maps of readings, for example)! I truly appreciate the thoughtful time and effort that went into the creation of the course content, flow and delivery, including the planning of the student small group interactions. You can really tell he not only knows the content inside and out, but enjoys teaching it. I hope I speak for the rest of the class when I say that we looked forward to each class, and to the guided interactions with each other. Dan made himself available for meetings with students in person, over the phone, and online. During the transition to virtual classrooms, he has been very encouraging and helpful with guidance on how to use Zoom for our individual presentations. More recently, Dan has invited students to join him for virtual tea on Zoom every afternoon. He truly cares that students succeed! I am deeply grateful for my experience in this class, and for having had Dan Ryan as an instructor."
- Andrea Liede-Sevsek
"He makes sure that everyone understands and simplifies everything when he is teaching. He also ensures that everyone participates in activities in the class so we all understand and then he makes the class fun so it easier what all he has taught to stick. Even in during his office hours, he is always available to explain things to you and ensure that you understand before leaving!"
- Anonymous
"Jenna is an incredibly caring and passionate instructor. She is someone who clearly desires her students to do well, learn, and discover new things about themselves. Her love for information science is incredibly contagious and motivates her students to pursue their curiosity."
- Anonymous
"Karen is an exceptional instructor, with just the right balance between theory, methodology and practise in all her lectures. She is always open, approachable, and mindful of differing student needs, while showing a genuine concern for our academic and professional development. Her teaching methods and encouragement have made a very real impact on my learning path, as well as helping all students adapt well to the tumultuous circumstances at the moment. I feel really lucky to have her as my lecturer!"
- Anonymous
"Karen Suurtamm is an incredibly kind and supportive teacher. She is extremely passionate about teaching and it is so obvious. I appreciate her concern for our well-being as humans and her willingness to help. I am always inspired by her concern with ethics and nuances. She is so committed to her students and even in large classrooms, the support and mentorship is there. She inspires me to continue to do the difficult work of being an archivist and work to make informed, ethically-based decisions. "
- Anonymous
"Karen is an amazing professor and really wants to help all of her students. Her lectures are superb and really make the students fall in love with the subjects. She's caring, thoughtful, and incredibly intellectual. Everyone in the class absolutely loved her teaching style and loved the overall vibe. "
- Angela Maggiacomo
"In all three classes I took with Prof. Suurtamm, I have appreciated not only the depth and breadth of her knowledge of the subject matter being taught, but also her compassion and genuine care for our learning and well-being. Her courses were more demanding than most, but in return she was equally generous in the time and effort she put into planning, teaching, and giving feedback on our assignments. I am grateful to have had a professor in the program who was always interested and willing to learn more herself, and who sought and took student input seriously. Thank you, Prof. Suurtamm!"
- Anonymous
"Rohan is an amazing instructor. He is very friendly and approachable and makes an effort to make us laugh. He is very accommodating with students requests and is always looking to introduce new concepts and tools to use for data analysis and visualization through his labs and tutorials. He takes student input seriously and made a lot of positive changes to the course to enhance the student experience this year. His hands on approach to labs and tutorial made the learning experience really amazing. Through his course, he encouraged us explore our own data sets and apply our choices of data analysis techniques so we were doing our own exploration, which was very nice. His willingness to make mistakes in class made me comfortable with asking questions in class and made the material less scary to learn. His data cleaning brownbag series opened the world of data science to me and made the field more familiar. I learned about different professions and how they use data and different challenges they face. I learned a lot from his course and the brown bag series."
- Anonymous
"Rohan has been an incredible instructor this year . He always responded to questions in an extremely quick time frame, made himself available for long office hours, focused on ethics, and has been exceptional in his handling of the new learning strategies we’ve had to adapt to this year. I learned a lot from him, both relating to data science and education. I’m nominating him because what we learned in his class if what I love about data science."
- Elena Wiegelmann
"Rohan is always available for students. His instructions are clear and easy to follow. He is not only open to feedback but actually implements students' suggestions. Being extremely knowledgeable and resourceful, he made sure that students learned to try various approaches in completing assignments. Rohan truly deserves this award."
- Anonymous
"Siobhan routinely goes out of her way to make course work and lectures engaging, dynamic, and accessible. In light of the COVID-19 situation, she has been extremely thoughtful and kind with making adjustments and checking in on myself and my classmates. Her honesty and openness are deeply refreshing and valued. "
- Percephone Miller
"Always offers help with assignments and creative portfolios (which are not part of the mandatory assignments to complete for the courses), did a great job transitioning from in-person lectures to online lectures given the circumstances, offers support to students during this time by giving deadline extensions and is overall a very thoughtful and caring person towards his students. Lectures are always fun and interactive even when they are held online. I enjoyed both his courses!"
- Anonymous
" The following explains why Velian deserves the award:
1. Each lecture was always engaging despite their scheduled times (9AM-12PM for INF2040 & 6:30PM-9:30PM for INF1340) - the fact that I have not fallen asleep during any of his lectures and still remember what was taught proves this.
2. His incredible support and guidance for students which ranges from extensions for assignments, numerous office hours options and live-streaming of games and pet reviews to keep all of us sane and entertained towards the end of a rather challenging Winter term (Winter 2020) - once lectures were over.
3. He brings to each lecture a wealth of knowledge from his experiences as a UX and computer science professional and presents them in a concise and clear way for students to understand and learn from.
4. Simply put, an amazing professor. 'Nuff said. "
- Anonymous
"After the changes from COVID-19, Velian creatively engaged with our (INF2040) class and found multiple ways to make us feel like a close knit community. Despite being a large class of over 50 students working from home, he incorporated fun events such as creating slide shows of our pets and even having us vote which video game he should play and stream in real-time outside of class hours. Inciting activities that can only be shared online made the transition to working online easier. Overall, he helped prove that the quality of education does not necessarily decrease when delivered online. His success is due to the fact that he engaged with everyone in-class very well and was able to quickly establish a sense of trust with everyone. I had a great experience learning project management in his class."
- Anonymous
"Velian is one of the most approachable, compassionate, and knowledgeable professors that I’ve encountered in university. He’s always available to help students excel in class, as well as offers council for those who want to do well in the industry after graduation. He has been especially understanding and caring during the COVID-19 situation this semester, for which I am extremely grateful."
- Anonymous
"This is the first time I take a course with Professor Velian. Not only is he knowledgeable in his field, he is also very passionate about teaching. He's always prepared for class, and one can see how organized and structured he is. He also gives TREMENDOUS support to his students: he makes himself available, gives constructive feedback, and focuses on giving the students the tools they need to excel. It was truly a pleasure to study with him, and will definitely try to take other classes with him."
- Anonymous
"Velian's instruction is very well organized and he delivers the lectures in a way that's very easy to follow and to form mental model around the subjects. In both programming and ui design classes, his assignments are also designed with thoughtful considerations—there is always a custom components where we can add our own input and thoughts freely. Additionally, during the quarantine, he hosts online events that gets us together to socialize and support each other. He is a truly amazing teacher."
- Keli Chiu
"Velian brings a lot of industry experience, and this comes through in his office hours. He is a great sounding board for ideas, and gives great practical advice on how to improve on a design. Velian has always created a positive classroom environment but really shone during the pandemic as classes moved online. He was an early adopter of the many features on BB Collaborate and actually managed to increase engagement by a lot. He was flexible in the assignments given and how they could be completed, and was empathetic and understanding. His classes were flexible and structured to provide opportunities for developing skills and thinking. He has also offered continual help even after the course in reviewing portfolios and such."
- Anonymous
"He is a passionate, compassionate, accommodating, and professional professor who has students’ interests at heart."
- Anonymous
"Professor Pandeliev works tirelessly to be a teacher, mentor, and support for all of his students. This past semester he taught two courses, each with multiple sections and still managed to have full days of office hours during which he consulted students not only in their coursework but in their career goals. He has worked to bring a multifaceted discipline to UX by teaching not only how to make good designs, how to be good designers through equitable practices and empathetic design. During the COVID-19 crisis he has been a consistent support caring for his student's academic success and their mental health. His tireless work and support make Professor Pandeliev more than deserving of this award."
- Anonymous
"I appreciate Prof. Pandeliev's ability to turn a relatively straightforward, potentially boring topic into something I was willing to spend my evening hours on. He is a professor who has clearly spent time thinking about how best to teach and assess the material, and seems to genuinely enjoy the teaching component of being in academia. Above all, I appreciated the way he seamlessly integrated international, anti-colonial/Eurocentric perspectives into both the lectures and readings, instead of segregating "diverse" voices into a special week, and his ability to speak comfortably about white supremacy and organizational culture himself, instead of relying solely on guest speakers or putting non-white students on the spot to provide the more "diverse" perspective."
- Anonymous
"Hands down best prof at this school."
- Veronica Rutherford