“What my students think is very important to me. I want them to know I’m concerned about their future and I want them to remember me as a professor who was committed and engaging.”
This is how Diane Ste-Marie, associate professor at the School of Human Kinetics, sums up her teaching.
Furthermore, she wants to use the research funding from her Excellence in Education Prize to study the strategies that the most successful students use, and to adapt them to help other students. Ste-Marie first became interested in this issue while writing letters of introduction. She noticed that the most outstanding students were those who were participating in extra-curricular activities.
As well as giving undergraduate courses in psychomotor behaviour, Ste-Marie also supports master’s and doctoral research students.
The appreciation of numerous students who have been in contact with Ste-Marie is unwavering. Unbelievably, she learns the names of all the students in her courses, fairly rare in classes of more than a hundred.
She uses a myriad of teaching techniques, laboratory experiments and in-class activities to illustrate her educational material. She has even invited pupils from a regional school to come to her class to demonstrate their motor learning skills. She is continuously re-examining the contents of her courses to reflect students’ evaluations and the results of recent research.
Although she devotes so much time to perfecting her teaching, Ste-Marie still has time for research. “Since I arrived at the University, my greatest challenge has been to maintain a balance between the quality of my teaching and my research program,” emphasizes the professor, who also has assumed administrative duties, as director of undergraduate programs and acting director of the school.
A considerable number of students who knew her during their undergraduate studies have, through their association with Ste-Marie, developed a taste for research. Amy Latimer, now a post-doctoral researcher at Yale, emphasizes that she was able to attend national and international research conferences with her, which is “a rare experience for an undergraduate student.
“She shared her passion for research,” Latimer adds. “It is this passion that drew me to research, carried me through my own graduate training and stays with me each day I go into my own lab.”
Ste-Marie is always working to improve her teaching, while participating in a number of workshops and conferences. She also helps her peers, particularly when she participates in workshops for new professors at the Centre for University Teaching and as an organizer for improvement sessions within the Faculty of Health Sciences.
BIODIDAC collection of zoological images
Excellence in Education Prizes
Jon Houseman: Digital imagery improves learning
Seymour Mayne: Teaching with a sense of mission
Alain Desrochers: A strong supporter of the scientific process
Paul Mayer: Striking a chemical equilibrium
Michel Saint-Germain: A professor must arouse a student’s interest
