Students at Otago University have voted Joneen Walker onto a list of their top ten lecturers for 2010. But, ironically Ms Walker will be taking voluntary redundancy next year after a restructuring of the university’s College of Education which aims to lift the university’s PBRF rating by placing a greater focus on PBRF active staff in the school, at the expense of experienced teacher practitioners like Ms Walker.

The students association, which organised the awards, said over 600 students nominated 283 separate lecturers for Teaching Awards, with this number being whittled down by a panel into a 20 members list of finalists for a final vote. 1272 students voted for the twenty finalists.

“It was very difficult to whittle down 283 nominated lecturers into a top twenty” said OUSA President, Harriet Geoghegan, “the standard of lecturers on campus is very high – we were delighted to see so many being nominated by their appreciative students.”

“At OUSA we feel it is important to recognise our top teachers from a student’s perspective, without the influence of PBRF scores, funding or research outputs – simply how the teachers engage with the students and help create our future teachers, doctors, lawyers, academics, businessmen, leaders or whatever their chosen fields. There were so many fantastic comments about Joneen – she has clearly touched the lives of a lot of students at the University of Otago who will no doubt be very sad to see her go,” said Ms Geoghegan.

Students who nominated Ms Walker praised her experience helpfulness and approachability:

“She is inspiring and enthusiastic, makes maths actually fun and exciting.  Most of the people in the class entered at the beginning of the year feeling very uncomfortable about teaching maths, but Joneen’s excitement for the subject and general open, honest down to earth attitude toward the students has turned us all into maths enthusiasts.”

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan had earlier said Government funding to colleges of education is insufficient for them to achieve both the traditional practice-based training of student teachers and significant engagement by staff in PBRF-recognised research.

Dr Ryan says it is grossly unfair that many of the college’s staff now face redundancy given that they were employed before the 2007 merger with the university precisely because of their experience and excellence as teaching practitioners.