The AKU Teachers’ Academy
A Recognition of Teaching Excellence
Situated within QTL_net, the purpose of establishing a Teachers’ Academy (TA) at AKU is to:
Reward and Recognise Excellence in Teaching
Develop a Community of Practice of Teaching Leaders
Enhance Interdisciplinary Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Create a Pool of Peer Mentors to Enhance Teaching
The Teachers Academy is ‘of and for faculty’. This is the first interdisciplinary Academy in the developing world, which is made up of outstanding AKU teachers, who are recognized for their contributions to teaching and learning in higher education.
Building on the Communities of Practice ethos of the Network of Quality, Teaching and Learning (QTL_net), the key principles that will drive the TA (and hence membership) are:
Recognition of Teaching Excellence
Focus on being interdisciplinary and university-wide;
Ensuring transparent and standard criterion-based membership;
Growing the membership slowly and keeping it ‘high profile’ and prestigious;
Enabling synergy between QTL_net and TA activities through mentorship services by members.
Our Inaugural Members
Join us in congratulating our inaugural members. Read more about them here.
Thoughts from our Inaugural Members
Eunice Siaity (School of Nursing & Midwifery, East Africa):
"As a TA member, I will champion the use of teaching and learning approaches/strategies which transform nurses/midwives enabling them to lead change and improve the quality of care in the healthcare system. These will include approaches which improve students' ability to translate and utilize knowledge to deal with complex health problems in our context. I will mentor colleagues in designing curriculum that evidence best practice so as to enhance this transformation."
Shanaz Cassum (School of Nursing & Midwifery, Pakistan):
“Aga Khan University School of Nursing and Midwifery (AKU-SONAM), has been my second home for last three decades. Every one of us, is responsible not only for educating the minds of our students, but also educating their hearts. Explaining and teaching to students what to do, is not difficult, because every good teacher can do that, but inspiring students to become caring and critical being is difficult, which only Great Teachers can do. As an inaugural member of AKU Teachers Academy, I aim to develop Great Teachers, by transforming students learning experiences, by mentoring peers to upgrade their teaching practices, and by partnering with national colleagues to utilise best practice standards in nursing education in Pakistan.”
