Four faculty members from four different departments were honored in the School of Engineering (SENG) Teaching Excellence Appreciation Award 2020-21. The award recognizes faculty members who demonstrate continuous excellence in undergraduate teaching, foster students’ interest in the subject, promote students’ learning, develop innovative and effective teaching methodologies, and more. Among the awardees, one is selected for the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Prof. Terence WONG, Chemical and Biological Engineering, received the Distinguished Teaching Award. He redesigned BIEN 1010 Introduction to Biomedical Engineering to make it approachable yet challenging, boosting enrollment twofold from 100 to 200. His contribution to the course was recognized with an Honorary Mention of the HKUST Common Core Teaching Excellence Award 2020.

In addition, he developed a required course on medical devices and imaging, titled BIEN 3410 Introduction to Bioinstrumentation and Bioimaging, which inspired students to think about technological innovation and entrepreneurship. In BIEN 3910 Bioengineering Laboratory, he coordinated the development of five brand new lab modules, which received a lot of positive feedback from students.

Prof. Andrew HORNER, Computer Science and Engineering; Prof. Rhea LIEM, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; and Prof. Ross MURCH, Electronic and Computer Engineering; received Teaching Awards.

Prof. Andrew Horner consistently obtained high teaching evaluation scores in COMP 1943 Creative Sound Design and COMP 4441 Computer Music. He made significant contribution to COMP 1943 by adopting innovative teaching approaches in an experiential and active learning manner, which also earned him an Honorary Mention of the HKUST Common Core Teaching Excellence Award 2020.

He played a major role in promoting education in the department when he served as the Associate Department Head (Education) from 2019 to 2021.

Prof. Rhea Liem developed two aerospace engineering courses from scratch, namely MECH 1907 Introduction to Aerospace Engineering and MECH 3620 Aircraft Design. She enriched the syllabus with historical perspectives, real-world applications and relevant videos to help students grasp the concepts. She also used real design case studies to bridge the gap between textbook knowledge and latest advancements in aircraft design.

Demonstrating her active participation in pedagogical innovation, she received two teaching development grants from the Center for Education Innovation that enabled her to develop an educational aircraft design platform (AeroMDAO) that is suitable for undergraduates. She also has notable involvement in experiential learning activities, including coaching students in an international, joint-university student competition. She recently won the University Grants Committee (UGC) Teaching Award 2021 under the category of Early Career Faculty Members.

Prof. Ross Murch taught two undergraduate courses with large class size, ELEC 1100 Introduction to Electro-Robot Design and ELEC 1200 A System View of Communications: from Signals to Packets. Total enrollment of the two courses exceeded 600 in the past three years.

He made great contribution in redesigning the two courses. He reformatted ELEC 1100 to support real-time online labs and projects using simulation software, in response to the online teaching mode during COVID-19, and introduced a hands-on project to ELEC 1200 to enhance the linkage between real-world problems’ solution and observations of theories and concepts.