I am absolutely thrilled and honoured to announce that our Centre for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI, or “The Centre”) team at YU + TFS is getting bigger, welcoming our three inaugural Senior Educational Developers who will lead and grow the key branches of The Centre that are our initial portfolio areas of expertise: the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; Faculty Excellence and Development; and Digital Pedagogies and Innovation.

 
Jenny Ge, Senior Educational Developer, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Jenny Ge (she/her) is an educational developer and scholarly teacher with over 5+ years of experience and a robust background in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), anti-racist pedagogies, and program evaluation. She completed her BEd and PhD in Education at Queen’s University, and holds a Credentialed Evaluator designation from the Canadian Evaluation Society. Her research explores teacher identity development across diverse contexts through narrative and arts-based methods.

She occasionally lectures in the University of Toronto’s Master of Teaching program and is immediately joining our CTEI from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, where she was the Educational Developer, Research and Evaluation. Outside of work, she loves spending time with her two dogs, River and Sunday – River being pictured here with Jenny. Photos of Sunday are promised to come soon.

 
Matthew Dunleavy, Senior Educational Developer, Faculty Excellence and Development

Matthew Dunleavy (he/him) is an educational developer and scholarly teacher with over 9+ years of experience. He immediately joins our CTEI from York University, where he was an Educational Developer with the Teaching Commons; before entering that role, he served as the Program Director of the Online Learning and Technology Consultants (OLTC) Program at the Maple League of Universities (Acadia University; Bishop’s University; Mount Allison University; and St. Francis Xavier University).

In 2022, he was awarded the D2L Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) for this work.

 
Alisa Cunnington, Senior Educational Developer, Digital Pedagogies and Innovation

Alisa Cunnington (she/her) is an educational developer and scholarly teacher with 6+ years in increasingly senior roles with educational technologies and over 25 years of post-secondary education teaching experience in colleges and universities, as well as with museums and art galleries. She is immediately joining our CTEI from Brock University’s Centre for Pedagogical Innovation, where she was the Senior Educational Developer, Technology Enabled Learning.

She is looking forward to connecting with YU + TFS faculty and instructors about their relationships with technology and its integration and entanglement with their pedagogies. (Alisa welcomes conversations, too, about her artistic practice; her research and teaching about storytelling, museum studies, or studies in arts and culture; her love of hiking and exploration of the world near and far; and her deep commitment to situating herself as a settler in a colonized nation and to all things anti-oppressive.)

 
Jenny, Matthew, and Alisa will work alongside and together with our YU + TFS faculty and instructors to advance our strategic priorities with Teaching Excellence and Innovation and collaborate in centring our Signature Learning Outcomes and embodying our Core Values at the heart of everything that we do.

They will start with us on April 15th, 2024.

I would also like to thank, from my whole heart, each of the YU + TFS community members who joined me as part of the CTEI Hiring Committee to find these three fabulous new team members: Yirong Wang (Educational Technologist, Centre for Teaching Excellence and Innovation); Natasha Hannon (Vice President, Teaching and Learning); Sepideh Mahani (Associate Dean, Faculty of Education, Yorkville University); Pheinixx Paul (Program Director, Graphic Design and Interactive Media, Toronto Film School); and Luba Hamiuka (Director, Talent Acquisition).

Please join me in welcoming Jenny, Matthew, and Alisa to YU + TFS and our Centre for Teaching Excellence and Innovation!

– Sent on behalf of Tommy Mayberry, Director, Centre for Teaching Excellence and Innovation