Since September 2014, the Department of Asian Studies has been awarding annual prizes to two Lecturers to recognize and celebrate excellence in teaching in the Lecturer rank. It is with great pleasure that we announce Janet Um and Nick Hall as our 2023/2024 Lecturers of The Year.
Janet Um
Lecturer in Sanskrit Language and Literature
Janet Um joined the Department of Asian Studies in 2022 immediately after completing her PhD at University of California at Berkeley in South and Southeast Asian Studies, and in her short time with us she has made herself invaluable through her enthusiastic and useful contributions to several aspects of the department.
First, she is an exceptional instructor who exemplifies the qualities of a dedicated and inspiring educator. Janet possesses a commanding knowledge of Sanskrit grammar and classical Indian culture, teaching our Sanskrit 300 and 400 courses. She also demonstrates remarkable versatility as an instructor, offering a variety of content courses on the literature, culture, and history of pre-modern India and South Asia, including a new course this year on Buddhist Narratives in South Asia. Her complete revamping of existing courses, such as The Sanskrit Cosmopolis: India and the World, 200-1500 CE, Narrative Literature in Premodern India, and Poetic Life in Classical India, among others, have greatly enriched the department’s course offerings on traditional and ancient India.
One of Janet’s primary goals in content-based courses is to foster critical engagement among her students, encouraging them to connect with both ideas and each other. She creates numerous opportunities for interactions and creative inquiry, urging students to draw meaningful connections with the real world. She demonstrates a strong commitment to student accessibility, and has redesigned a number of existing syllabi according to the principles of universal and inclusive design, as well as redesigning courses to enhance and facilitate collaborative learning.
Beyond the classroom, Janet has been a regular attendee at a wide range of department events, and has promoted the Sanskrit program at various student-facing outreach activities. She has served on faculty search committees, and even when not a committee member has been notable for attending all the job talks and providing constructive, useful feedback to search committee members.
Again, although Janet has not been with us long, she has made herself an extremely valued member of the department, and we are delighted to present to her the Lecturer of the Year award.
Nick Hall
Lecturer in Japanese Language
Nick Hall got his BA, MA, and PhD in this department, and, after teaching for a few years at Langara College, he joined our department as a Lecturer in Japanese Language in 2014. In the Japanese Language Program, he has been a core member of the Distance Education committee, where he played a key role in designing and creating online learning modules for Japanese 100 and 101. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Nick’s experience with the technology and the techniques of effective online course delivery enabled him to play a crucial role in supporting JLP and Asian Studies faculty in the transition to remote teaching. In 2023 Nick served as the chair for the Distance Education/online instruction committee, spearheading a TLEF project aimed at creating interactive resources not only for online courses, but also for in-person and hybrid formats, with a goal to facilitating and enhancing student engagement across all modes of instruction. Nick was a founding member of the Tadoku (extensive reading) club for Japanese language students, which promotes autonomous reading and reading for pleasure, as well as being a key organizer in other JLP events, such as Talent Night and the Singing Contest, that help to build a vibrant Japanese language learning community.
But this is only half the story, as Nick has also taught a number of large-enrollment ASIA prefix courses: Japanese Film, Modern Japanese Literature in Translation, and Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Japanese Literature and Film, a course he created. He has served on a wide variety of departmental committees, and was primarily responsible for the creation of the Asian Studies Peer Review of Teaching online training course, which was also used as a template for the creation of the online PRT training course in the Faculty of Arts.
Nick’s early and effective use of a wide variety of pedagogical technologies and his versatility as an instructor and service committee member have enriched the department as a whole. We are delighted to present our Lecturer of the Year award to Nick for his many accomplishments.
