Three lecturers within UW's faculty of arts have been nominated for TVO's Big Ideas Best Lecturer Competition. Students and alumni of any Ontario post secondary institution were invited to nominate one lecturer from September 8 to October 12 for the 2010 competition. Students at Waterloo nominated Mary Ann Vaughan of economics, Frances Chapman of legal studies, and Brad MacMaster of accounting and finance.

The Best Lecturer Competition has a total of 332 professors who have accepted their nomination. The list of nominees will be narrowed down to the top 20 by early December and the top 10 finalists will be announced by early February with their lectures airing on TVO in March 2010. The winning lecture is to be decided by a panel of judges along with viewers. The school of the winning lecture will receive a $10,000 TD Insurance Meloche Monnex Scholarship.

MaryAnn Vaughan, a graduate of Waterloo, has been involved in work within the department of economics since 1989 and has been teaching on campus since 1996. She mainly teaches first-year students in classes of 250 to 500 students but also teaches a lot of second-year classes. “The trick to teaching that many students is to be larger than life,” she said, and added that at the same time she needs to be very strict to avoid potential pandemonium. When describing her teaching style, Vaughan put emphasis on two things: her personality and her role as a mother. “I can't suppress my own personality,” she stated, adding that she likes her classes to take an open and honest form and explains concepts using funny personal stories. Referring to her students, she said, “I think of them as kids since I am a mother.”

Another aspect making Vaughan's classes unique and valued by her students is that she manages to sneak in additional material regardless of its relation to economics. “I don't mind taking an extra 10 minutes to teach something interesting that's not to do with economics,” she said referring to a recent lesson where she brought students' attention to an article about teaching and brain activity. “I'm not just teaching economists, I'm teaching young people.”

Before being nominated, Vaughan says that she had never heard of the competition, and upon receiving the email in mid-October, she had to clarify the legitimacy of the competition. “I wasn't sure if it was real. I thought it was spam and almost deleted it,” said Vaughan. Her family and others with whom she associates on campus were fairly enthusiastic about the competition. However, it was after her first-year class broke out into spontaneous applause at hearing the announcement, that she decided to accept the nomination. Another significant factor influencing her to accept the offer and have one of her lectures taped was the act that “some student went to some effort to nominate me. I would have to accept and go to some effort as well.”

For the taping of the lecture, Vaughan changed nothing. “I did my lecture the way I would have done it — changed nothing. I closed the way I always close and I got an applause from my first-year students at the end!” While she did feel a bit of anxiety about her teaching style, she decided to do everything as usual, which ultimately worked in her favour. Vaughan comments on the contest as being a great experience.

Frances Chapman has been teaching at Waterloo since July of 2007 and teaches a larger class of 150 first-year students and a smaller class of 20 fourth-year students. Chapman said, “I have really interactive classes. I love to have participation and for them to challenge me and tell me I'm wrong. I try to empower them to think for themselves.” Her fourth-year class is a debate-style class where students get to use knowledge obtained throughout their years in legal studies. She explains how she likes being able to get to know the students from first year all the way to fourth year when she often gets to help them to apply to law school.

She described the contest as being great and is flattered to be nominated. “It's so wonderful for a student to think of me,” she said, explaining that she has known the student who nominated her since the student's first year at Waterloo. Chapman added that it's a great way to advertise for legal studies. She refers to the experience as being “a reflection on how great the students are, and a team effort more than anything.” Chapman has not been nominated in the past but had first heard of the contest when a professor of hers at York became one of the final 10 a couple years ago. Chapman described the taping of the first-year lecture as being a very different experience. She explains that “It was representative of what we do all the time.” The lecture was on criminal law for a legal studies 101 class, and the taping was done by Waterloo's AV department.

Brad MacMaster of accounting and finance is teaching his second semester at Waterloo and also teaches at both Ryerson University and Guelph-Humber as well. After being nominated for the Best Lecturer Competition by both Waterloo and Guelph Humber, MacMaster chose to represent Waterloo.

MacMaster said that his classes are highly interactive, which is unusual in the area he teaches. “I try to stimulate discussion between students. I get them to imagine they are the owners of a business and get them to think of how to respond in an owner and manager position.” He incorporates stories and anecdotes of things he has done into his lectures. “I like to be relaxed and try to get to know the students by name,” he said.

MacMaster teaches Accounting Information for Managers which is a first-year course. Many of the students in his class are arts students in the arts and business program, and while the class is not necessarily easy, he expects a lot from his students, He states his teaching goals by saying “I want to make classes interesting enough to come to so that when they leave class they've gotten something out of it and have gotten value for their time and money.”

While this is the only course MacMaster has taught at Waterloo, he has experience in teaching a variety of other accounting courses and has taught overseas in Austria.

This is his first nomination for the Best Lecturer Competition and he learned about the contest from Ryerson.

All three Waterloo lecturers will have their filmed lectures sent to TVO by November 17. The lectures filmed at Waterloo campus can be seen on TVO during the spring of 2010.