OCAD U announces 2023-24 Teaching Award recipients

Image left to right: Jananda Lima, Dr. Ian Clarke, Ranee Lee, Ian Keteku, Suharu Ogawa and Nadine Hare. Absent from photo: Dr. Ayumi Goto, James Knott, Semone Rajkumar and Dr. Chris Kim.

This year’s Academic Year Welcome, held on August 28, celebrated the recipients of the 2023-24 Teaching Awards, which recognize outstanding faculty, instructors and teaching assistants who provide exceptional learning experiences for OCAD University students.

Before introducing each recipient, Vice-President, Academic and Provost Dr. Caroline Langill asked those gathered for the event to join her “in congratulating these members of our community for their significant contributions over the past year!”

2023-24 TEACHING AWARD RECIPIENTS

Price Award for Leadership in Teaching: Ranee Lee
Associate Professor, Tenured, Faculty of Design

Image left to right: Ranee Lee and Dr. Langill.

Ranee Lee (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor in the Industrial Design program at OCAD U and the founder of DESIGNwith, a collaborative research and design lab for social and environmental good. Lee’s pedagogical practice is intertwined with her design practice; she is committed to the idea that design can be a force for social change leading to a more equitable future. As an educator, Lee believes in the importance of bringing her whole self into the classroom and has seen the transformative effect this has on students, who feel invited to show up fully in their projects. She co-developed the Circular Design course, in which students learn the principles of circularity and can apply and expand their learning at the DESIGNwith lab. This fall, she will teach Human Centred Design offsite at Baycrest Hospital, a course which allows students to gain immersive experience in design research projects with/for older adults living with dementia.

Non-Tenured Award for Leadership in Teaching: Ian Keteku 
Lecturer, Teaching Stream, Faculty of Arts & Science

Image left to right: Ian Keteku and Dr. Langill.

Nana Ian Budu Keteku is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts & Science who has been been teaching at OCAD U since 2020. In courses such as, Writer in Community and Intro to Spoken Word and Dub, students are given the opportunity to actualize hidden powers, awaken within them the spirit and take on a new perspective for the future. Across all his pedagogy, Keteku seeks to assist students in finding their voices and inspire them to use their art as a catalyst for social change.

Faculty of Art Teaching Award: Dr. Ayumi Goto 
Assistant Professor (CLTA), Faculty of Art

Dr. Ayumi Goto ( 我々, it) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Art who has been teaching at OCAD U since 2020. Dr. Goto teaches courses such as Design for Health and Coming to Know the Culture (Advertising) and regards learning as a collaborative and reciprocal process. Dr. Goto is committed to meeting students where they currently reside in terms of their knowledge, experience and backgrounds. In Dr. Goto’s courses, students have shared that they experience care and a strong sense of community.

Faculty of Design Teaching Award: Suharu Ogawa
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Design

Image left to right: Suharu Ogawa and Dr. Langill. 

Suharu Ogawa (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Design who has been teaching at OCAD U since 2020. Ogawa’s pedagogy is grounded in “Grandmother’s Table,” a pedagogical concept shared by a Diné scholar, Dr. Amanda Cheromiah (Laguna Pueblo), whose approach encourages classroom interaction similar to sitting around our grandmother’s kitchen table. The goal of this concept is to facilitate the creation of a non-judgmental, respectful, inclusive and informative space where both students and teacher feel safe to be vulnerable and share stories from lived experiences that are relevant to the class topic and discussion. In courses such as Contemporary Illustration, students participate in conversations on how colonialism, white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of violence have been perpetrated through illustration and how they can address these concerns in their own work. In Ogawa’s courses, students feel supported and valued while engaging in brave and compassionate conversations.

Faculty of Arts & Science Teaching Award: Dr. Ian Clarke
Associate Professor, Tenured, Faculty of Arts & Science

Image left to right: Ian Clarke and Dr. Langill.

Dr. Ian Clarke is an Associate Professor of Biology and Sustainability in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and an Associate Director of the Global Centre for Climate Action (GCCA). Clarke is committed to creating a welcoming, fun and inclusive learning environment that bridges the fields of science with art and design. He believes that our greatest teacher is the natural world, and that we all have a role to play in envisioning and creating truly sustainable cultures that are essential to solving our many pressing ecological challenges, such as the climate crisis. Clarke designed and currently teaches Biological Principles of Sustainability and Understanding Climate Change, two courses that are core parts of both the Sustainability Minor and OCAD U’s new Science Minor. A long-time faculty member, he first began teaching at the Ontario College of Art (OCA), before it became OCAD U, in 1997 and has taught at OCAD U since 2003.

School of Graduate Studies Teaching Award: Nadine Hare and Jananda Lima
Instructors, Faculty of Design

Image left to right: Jananda Lima, Nadine Hare and Dr. Langill.

Nadine Hare (she/her) and Jananda Lima (she/her) are instructors in the Faculty of Design who co-teach Innovation Research Methods in the Strategic Foresight and Innovation Masters. They approach the classroom as a relational space—one that is transformational, decolonial, vulnerable, caring, passionate, joyful and embodied. In centering relationships (over information/theory), their hope is that learning becomes transformational for everyone involved.

Hare has been teaching at OCAD U since 2019. She is a design anthropologist whose work focuses on embedding ethnographic methods and decolonial thinking within human-centred design processes, and in doing so, contributes to the design of more caring and equitable futures.

Lima has been teaching at OCAD U since 2021 as a sessional professor in the School of Graduate Studies and the Faculty of Design, and a consultant researcher at the Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge. As an academic, her research in social design involves fieldwork in radically marginalized territories, and as a futures designer, she focuses on reclaiming design for decolonial world making.

Students have praised Hare and Lima for embodying the principles they teach and creating a holistic learning experience that encourages students to reexamine their perspectives and assumptions.

Teaching Assistant Award: James Knott 
Teaching Assistant, Faculty of Art

James Knott (they/them) has been a Teaching Assistant (TA) at OCAD U since 2018, in courses such as Time-Based Media and Form & Time. Knott has been a TA for Form & Time for several years. In their teaching, they aim to help students develop a healthy relationship with a process-based studio practice, combatting the debilitating product-oriented model that often leads to creative block, self-doubt and burnout. Knott approaches students with the perspective that they are already artists of dignity in their own right, with the means to establish a working practice to produce and exhibit work that is led by their conceptual interests and their artistic process. Students have commented that Knott has supported them in developing a passion for different mediums and ways of working that they had never previously considered.

School of Continuing Studies Teaching Award: Semone Rajkumar and Dr. Chris Kim
Instructors, School of Continuing Studies

Semone Rajkumar (she/her) teaches the Mould Making Studio in the School of Continuing Studies. She is an artist and creator in a diverse range of artistic disciplines, exploring form, functionality and materials to establish connections with oneself and others. She holds a degree in Sculpture/Installation from OCAD U and has extensive experience working in foundry, specializing in wax working, mould making, bronze casting and patination. Her practice also encompassed ceramics. Currently, Rajkumar is actively involved as an educator at OCAD U, while pursuing her freelance and artistic endeavors, and organizing regular art sessions designed to engage individuals with special needs and autism.
 

Dr. Chris Kim teaches Introduction to Designing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications, Introduction to Web Design, Dynamic Web Design, PH and Advanced Web Design, CSS and JavaScript Frameworks in the School of Continuing Studies. Dr. Kim is a user-focused software developer in pursuit of using technology to facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and address today's talent gap in digital media. Trained in media production and information visualization, he works with institutional stakeholders, including University of Toronto, DARPA and MIT, to build platforms that democratize AI and promote human-in-the-loop automation. He also operates a software studio called GoodCodeClub, where he works with emerging talents in promoting underserved communities and facilitating youth entrepreneurship.