Five nominations for dynamic duo
Published April 2012
Internet computing lecturers Jarod Locke and Tim Rowland have been nominated for no less than FIVE SU Excellence awards
Now in their 2nd year these awards are a celebration of the staff and students who make the University of Brighton so special.
During February & March students have the opportunity to nominate those staff and students who have made a real difference to their learning & academic experience for awards.
This year there were over 1,100 nominatiosn for 166 course reps and 500 members of academic and suport staff.
Kate Glover, course rep for Internet computing wrote the following statement about her lecturers who have been nominated:
While we're a small group (16 in the first year, about a dozen in the second year) I do know that about half of our group have nominated Jarod and Tim for awards, as have a number of the Year 2s. I imagine that for the awards they've been nominated for - they almost certainly each have multiple nominations!
Jarod Locke is the campus course leader for the FdSc award, and due to our course leader having been off on maternity leave for the first semester - he has also been doing a lot of the work of us too. He has been absolutely fantastic. When we have had concerns brought to us as course reps, we have taken them to him, and he has always got back to us about it within 24 hours, with either a solution or an explanation (usually the former!) He's been so good that by the time we get to course board - we don't have a lot left to bring up!
He works really hard for us to make sure that we have the knowledge and resources for each student to achieve their potential - often tailoring lectures to address common mistakes or gaps in our knowledge in response to assignments we've handed in. Following our first report-based hand-in, he spent a whole HE Study Skills session going through "formal report format", addressing common weaknesses and emphasising the difference between similar areas which may have become confused. He's always very thoroughly prepared for lectures, clearly is very knowledgeable about his subjects, his feedback from assignments is thorough and constructive, he's very approachable, very supportive, totally dependable and we genuinely don't know what we'd do without him!
Jarod has been nominated in the following categories:
Achievement Award.
21st Century Teaching Award.
The 'Mastermind of Student Central' Award.
Tim Rowland teaches programming based modules on the first two years of the BSc (and therefore both years of the FdSc). What can we say about Tim that's not said after every lecture and often in between?! So very knowledgeable, flexible, approachable, supportive and thorough. He breaks a very intimidating subject down into manageable pieces, and ensures that every student, no matter how able, has the support and resources they need to gain a solid understanding. He strives to respond to questions and emails promptly, often in much more depth than one expects, and surpasses expectations at every level. The feedback that each member of our group has had for our first assignment, runs to multiple pages (I think the record was 7) with suggestions for improvements, considerations for future projects and developments, and a huge amount of constructive advice which means that we all know how to improve and progress to higher grades in future.
He has inspired us to set up our own programming peer-support group (for which Jarod has secured us the use of the HE Common Room up at SCCH) which we run on a Monday afternoon - a day when we have no timetabled lectures! Some of us make extra trips on the train from as far away as Eastbourne and Crawley in order to get in there to work on extra projects and support each other in our learning for his modules.
Tim has been nominated in the following categories:
Teaching Award for Academic Engagement
Inspirational Teaching Award
