Dr. Nienke van Houten – a university lecturer and the director of undergraduate education at the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) – is being recognized with an Excellence in Teaching Award for 2025.
The award committee highlighted several laudable aspects of her teaching, including: reflective pedagogy; strong engagement in the scholarship of teaching; and, sustained commitment to continued professional learning including decolonization and Indigenization training, and evolution of instructional skills.
“I’m honoured to be recognized with this award,” says van Houten. “It’s been particularly rewarding to discover new depths in my teaching during this stage of my career, especially when I’ve felt some disconnection and fatigue from the routine [in the past].”
The impetus for evolving her teaching approach involved both personal and professional shifts. She recounted a moment in 2018 where she entered a lecture hall with 200+ students and felt “a gut-wrenching dissociation” upon realizing that she didn’t recognize any of the students. “I knew this [approach to teaching] was not sustainable, and that if I were to continue in this career, I needed to build a community in my classroom.”
With this new desire to engage her students in mind, van Houten focused her scheduled 2018 study leave on two projects: developing a methodology to support undergraduate students in comprehensively and critically reading primary scientific literature; and, joining the first cohort of SFU lecturers learning how to decolonize their teaching.
