This year’s Faculty of Graduate Studies’ Teaching Award recipient is Professor Anne MacLennan from the Graduate Programs in Communication & Culture, History and Interdisciplinary Studies. The award, which is bestowed annually on a member of FGS, recognizes teaching and supervisory excellence, as well as scholarly, professional and teaching developments and initiatives in the graduate program and curriculum development.
Vice-Provost Academic, Lyndon Martin, presented the award on March 2nd at the Faculty Council, praising MacLennan’s passion for educating. “I would like to extend my personal thanks and gratitude for your many contributions to graduate education, and in particular the excellent teaching and mentorship you have provided to our community.”
Letters of nomination applauded MacLennan’s pedagogical style, with many of her students noting her exceptional way of teaching them to push their own thinking and to work collaboratively to build ideas. The referees recalled her techniques and approaches that positively changed their relation to graduate study and enhanced their skill proficiency in various dissemination formats from grant writing to syllabus design to conference presentations, to articles, to the dissertation.
“It is wonderful to be honoured with the Faculty of Graduate Studies’ Faculty Teaching Award,” shares MacLennan. “Working with our graduate students at York University is a very rewarding experience. Their research and work makes positive changes in the world and contributes tremendously to research. I enjoy being part of their journeys!”
Also in attendance was Dean and Associate Vice-Provost Graduate, Thomas Loebel, who also commended MacLennan’s exemplary work.
Anne MacLennan
“I think that the heart of Dr. MacLennan’s highly effective and award-winning teaching is that she rivals even the best of clinicians at teaching students over the course of their degrees, both from work inside and outside the classroom – which is also to say, with a wealth of scholarly material and experiential development, but also as an interlocutor anywhere – how to locate the source of their confidence as scholar-people and to build it rightly and ethically with others.”
MacLennan is teaching her 40th distinct course in 2023 and over the years has supervised more than 30 MA and 6 PhD students to completion, as well as one postdoctoral fellow. With over twenty years of experience teaching communication studies, media studies, history, methodology and other interdisciplinary topics, she helps all students in the program whenever they need support, ranging from scholarship and award applications to thesis and dissertation proposals. Moreover, when MacLennan was the GPD of Communication and Culture, she led the program’s restructuring of the curriculum to incorporate professional development opportunities into formal courses, permitting skills-based approaches to flourish while facilitating opportunities for interdisciplinary growth amongst students.
Zoom capture of FGS Council meeting with Vice-Provost Academic Lyndon Martin, Dean & Associate Vice-Provost Graduate Thomas Loebel and Professor Anne MacLennan
Outside the classroom, MacLennan continues to be an inspiration to her students, contributing widely to the academic community. She has been published in many recognized journals and has given 125 presentations at conferences. Additionally, MacLennan served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Radio & Audio Media from 2017 to 2021. Her current work, a book manuscript in progress, is a study of the program listings of seven cities across Canada during the 1930s to explain the distinct element of local non-network radio and the changes across the country as national network radio is put in place in stages.
Previously, MacLennan has been awarded the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (Tenure/Tenure-Track Stream) for 2020-21 and the University-Wide Teaching Award in 2006.
MacLennan inherently represents the FGS Teaching Award's dedication to substantial, significant and sustained excellence, commitment and enthusiasm to the multifaceted aspects of teaching at the graduate level at York.
Learn more about FGS’ Faculty Teaching Award | yorku.ca/gradstudies/faculty-staff/academic-affairs/teaching-award/