Mechanical Engineering faculty member Dr. Agnes d’Entremont has won a 2019/2020 Killam Teaching Prize in recognition of her excellence in teaching. Faculty are nominated for the Killam Teaching Prize by students, colleagues and alumni. She has made ongoing contributions to educational excellence in Mechanical Engineering, through her teaching, leadership, advocacy, and dedication to student learning.
As the coordinator of the department’s award-winning second year program, for the last four years Dr. d’Entremont has influenced the experience of hundreds of Mechanical Engineering students. She has provided teaching excellence in her Dynamics and Mechanical Design courses, as well as her upper year Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Fundamentals of Injury Biomechanics courses. As the Mech 2 coordinator, she has molded the undergraduate experience by coordinating the seven integrated courses of this foundational curriculum – which involve 16 instructors and 59 teaching assistants from four departments. Among other efforts she has made to facilitate student success and mental well-being this demanding program, she collaborated with UBC Wellness in 2019 to introduce a mental health component into the Mech 2 program.
Dedicated to access and inclusion, Dr. d’Entremont has sought to reduce barriers to engineering education within all her roles. As an educational leadership researcher, she investigates various topics within the context of engineering pedagogy, including gender, mental health, engineering literacy, and open educational resources, and has shared her findings in 15 conference papers. Striving to make engineering a discipline where all people feel included, she is involved in initiatives on and off campus to foster the participation of women and members of the LGBTQ community in engineering, and works to align her teaching approach and curriculum with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.
Of particular importance to Dr. d’Entremont is increasing access to engineering education to students of a wide socio-economic background. As the founding chair of the Special Interest Group in Open Educational Resources for the Canadian Engineering Education Association and one of Open UBC’s Open Educational Resource Champions, she is a leader in the development of openly accessible educational materials. Integrating open educational resources (OER) the classroom, her assignments have involved students in the creation of OER for their peers, such as working on an open textbook. Involved in developing content for the open source online homework platform WeBWork, she has led local and national workshops on how to use it, and spearheaded the creation of over 1600 new engineering problems, which can be used by educators and students all over the world.
She is one of 23 Killam Teaching Prize recipients from across campus, and one of two in Applied Science, with Nursing’s Cheryl Segaric also recognized. Our congratulations to Dr. d’Entremont for this prestigious recognition and for her many contributions to student learning within the department!