Faculty recognises graduate teaching assistants at annual event

The Faculty presented its Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) of the year award at the annual staff BBQ last week.

Elton Dias from the Department of Chemical Engineering was named overall winner of the award for 2016, while Robin Thomas (Earth Science and Engineering) and Alexandros Nordas (Civil and Environmental Engineering) received the highly commended award.

The GTA of the year award recognises the integral role GTAs perform within the Faculty and offers an incentive for GTAs to strive for excellence in their teaching.

Each year, every engineering department selects its best GTA and from these nominees the Faculty chooses the overall winner.

The departmental nominees were:

• Richard Ahlfield (Aeronautics)
• Dana Al Sulaiman (Bioengineering)
• Elton Dias (Chemical Engineering)
• Alexandros Nordas (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
• Romain Barnoud (Computing)
• Sam Cooper (Dyson School of Design Engineering)
• Himadri Das (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
• Robin Thomas (Earth Science and Engineering)

The panel was particularly impressed with all the nominations, though Elton stood out enough to win the overall award.

His departmental nomination was full of praise for this year's winner:

"Elton started his PhD in October 2014 and since then he has acted as a GTA for six different modules in Chemical Engineering. This strong presence in the Chemical Engineering course is a clear testimony of Elton’s enthusiasm and engagement for teaching.

"For all these courses, Elton took the time to master the topics before teaching them. While it is clear that he has high expectations for the students, he sets even higher standards for himself as well and he does not count the hours when preparing for the laboratories and trying to fine-tune experiments to ensure they run seamlessly."

Congratulations to Elton and all this year's nominees.

Find out more about graduate teaching assistants.