AKU Faculty Virtual Mentorship Programme
Following a successful pilot mentorship programme between Academics Without Borders (AWB) volunteers and some faculty members at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, EA, the Network of Teaching and Learning is pleased to announce the launch of a university-wide virtual mentorship programme for AKU faculty.
Mentors will work with faculty in the following ways:
Collaboratively engage in projects to enhance teaching and learning, where possible.
Assist faculty in publishing their work by either co-writing, reviewing draft publications or helping them identify avenues of publication.
Guide faculty to resources/links to support them in developing their scholarship in teaching and learning.
Mentors in this programme are highly successful academics with vast experience in teaching, research and faculty development. They are:
Tim Buell
Tim Buell is from Toronto, Canada. His doctoral studies are in Leadership and Adult Higher Education (OISE), and in Music Theory and Composition (Pitt). He has held a multidisciplinary range of graduate and undergraduate professorial appointments in communications, cultural studies, technical writing, arts journalism, public speaking, rhetoric, educational psychology, social power theory, environmental design, continuing education, and in music theory and composition. He has a special interest in educational technology, adult learning and continuing education, interdisciplinary studies, curriculum design, teaching and learning professional development, and has received two university teaching excellence awards.
Marilyn Chapman, RN, BSN, MAdEd
Marilyn Chapman has extensive experience as a nurse educator. She recently retired from Vancouver Island University after 25 years during which time she taught many aspects of nursing theory and practice including maternal/child, interpersonal relationships, health promotion and community development, teaching and learning, feminist issues and research. Her interests include feminist pedagogy and other forms of transformative teaching and learning, curriculum development and innovative practice learning approaches.
As well as teaching she has held administrative positions and was involved in numerous curriculum design projects. As part of her service to the profession Marilyn volunteers as an accreditation reviewer for the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing. Since retiring she has volunteered with Academics Without Borders and spent a total of 7 months working with faculty at AKU in East Africa. She continues to teach on a contract basis at Vancouver Island University.
Susan Crichton, BSc, MA, PhD
Susan Crichton is the director of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia¹s Okanagan Campus and the founding director of the Innovative Learning Centre. Her research explores the thoughtful design and development of learning environments to enable quality teaching and learning, especially those in challenging contexts. She is an early adopter of simple digital approaches for qualitative research to honor and enable participant voice.
Susan has been invited to work in Bhutan, Chile, Tanzania, and Uganda, principally in the area appropriate technologies. She has experience in education for rural and remote communities.
Bibiana Cujec, MD, FRCPC, FACC, FASE
Following completion of her cardiology training in 1988, Bibiana Cujec became a member of the Division of Cardiology at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon and was promoted to associate professor of medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. She was the Director of the Echocardiography Laboratory at the Royal University Hospital and the Cardiology Residency Program Director at the University of Saskatchewan.
In 1997, Dr Cujec worked as a cardiologist at an Edmonton community hospital, the Misericordia Hospital for three years and then moved to the University of Alberta Hospital in 2000. She was promoted to full professor in 2008. She is the past coordinator for undergraduate teaching in the cardiovascular block and past medical clerkship director at the University of Alberta.
Dr Cujec’s research interests have focused on echocardiography and education. She has been involved in medical education at the undergraduate, postgraduate and CME levels. She completed a master’s degree in Adult Education at the University of Saskatchewan and has carried out research on assessment tools, gender issues and career satisfaction among physicians. Bibiana has won several teaching awards at the University of Alberta. Since 2010, she have been involved in cardiovascular medicine undergraduate curriculum and faculty development at the Patan Academy of Health Sciences in Kathmandu, Nepal. With a colleague, she visited and performed a needs assessment for a postgraduate cardiology training program at Mekelle University in northern Ethiopia in January 2015.
Bibiana Cujec has a general cardiology outpatient practice and also works in the Heart Failure Clinic at the University of Alberta Hospital. She rotates as attending physician on the Cardiology inpatient wards and consultation service where she interprets transthoracic echocardiograms and performs transesophageal echocardiograms.
Jane Gair, PhD
Jane Gair received her BSc in Cell Biology and Genetics and her PhD in Medical Genetics from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia where she primarily teaches medical students in the Island Medical Program of UBC. Dr Gair has a special interest in international medical education is a volunteer teacher at a medical school in Kathmandu, Nepal. As well, she collaborates on many research projects in medical education internationally with colleagues in Nepal, Australia and China. She has an interest in curriculum design, renewal and faculty development. As well as teaching her colleagues how to teach medical students, she also trains teachers in Nepal and Australia and has most recently returned from a trip to China where she taught faculty in Changsha how to design courses, design curricula and how to teach effectively.
Catharine A Kopac, RN, PhD, DMin, GNP-BC
Catharine Kopac is a retired associate professor of nursing (2014) who currently has adjunct faculty status with George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She has taught graduate research, ethics, advanced health assessment and geriatrics to graduate nursing students for many years. Her first love is geriatrics and she has focused on the care of older adults since her early graduate school days in the 1970s. Dr Kopac has maintained a clinical practice as a nurse practitioner, ethicist consultant in Adult Protective Services in Fairfax County, Virginia, for the past 14 years. She has a special interest in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and is certified in Dream Work (she can use it as a clinical modality).
Doug Orr
Doug Orr is Teaching Development Coordinator at the University of Lethbridge Teaching Centre in Lethbridge, Alberta. His career in education spans the past 42 years. He holds a Bachelor of Education with a major in physical sciences, a postgraduate Diploma in Educational Administration, and a Master of Education. While Doug Orr has experience teaching from elementary through to graduate school (predominantly as a senior high school teacher and administrator), his current role focuses on providing pedagogical and instructional support to university instructors and graduate students to address curriculum design, course planning, lesson preparation, student assessment and evaluation, strategies for student engagement, and the development of online- and blended-delivery courses. He occasionally teaches undergraduate classes in curriculum and instruction, science education, or student assessment. Doug’s research interests include self-reporting indices informing teaching praxis and professional development, student perceptions of university learning environments, and teaching and learning of metacognitive and collaborative problem-solving skills.
Yvonne Ying
Yvonne Ying is a Plastic Surgeon in Ottawa, Canada. She works at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa. In addition to her medical training, she completed a masters degree in Health Professionals Education from the University of Toronto.
Dr Ying is currently the Program Director for foundational training for all surgical residents in Ottawa and runs the Residents-as-Teachers course. Her areas of academic interest include curriculum development for general surgical skills, teaching health advocacy, and international surgery. She has experience in building surgical skills curricula, and research in surgical education.
Yvonne Ying’s areas of clinical interest include improving access to surgical care for marginalized patient in Ottawa, and surgical care in low-income countries. She has been involved in a number of international surgical programs including Cleft management partnerships in Uganda, building a surgery training program in Guyana, and teaching plastic surgery in Ethiopia.
