We are pleased to announce that Dr. Lim Wee Hun Stephen has won the 2013 university-level Annual Teaching Excellence Award. This award is given by the University to recognize faculty members who have demonstrated an exceptional level of commitment to, and achievement of, good teaching, and will be presented at a university-level ceremony – the ATEA Ceremony and OEA Public Lectures.
Here’s a short excerpt of the Faculty Teaching Excellence Committee’s citation about Dr. Lim:
Dr Stephen Lim is only in his second year of teaching but he has already distinguished himself as an exceptional teacher. He won the ATEA for his first year of teaching, and has maintained his excellent teaching performance across five unique modules in this second year, one of which was a new class that Dr Lim created and taught for the first time (PL3281D). Dr Lim’s teaching philosophy offers some insights into his outstanding teaching ability. He uses three words that sum up his teaching objectives: encourage, engage, and empower. Together, these three qualities motivate students to be independent learners hungry for knowledge. Dr Lim is an inspired communicator. There appears to be no concept that is too dry or abstract for him to convey clearly and powerfully. He has a gift in enlivening these concepts by linking them to daily life. He started several programmes to motivate his students – the Stephen Lim Sustained Critical Thinking Award to encourage critical thinking, the Stephen Lim Innovative Idea Prize to encourage innovative thought, and the Stephen Lim Commendation to bolster strong research. Dr Lim excels in research supervision, with a stellar track record. His heavy teaching duties have not stopped him from taking on numerous students for research supervision. He has been highly available for research consultation, even at night. His students have won three international research awards, the NUS Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Prize, and the Singapore Psychological Society Best Undergraduate Research Award. To students, working with Dr Lim is a vivid reminder that they can produce high quality research work – all they just need is a good mentor. Many students report that they have gained a different perspective of school topics – previously they saw them as useless academic knowledge, now they see how such knowledge helps them to understand the real world. More importantly, many students reported significant changes in their attitude to learning – they now feel more eager to ask, to investigate, and to learn. Students describe Dr Lim as “inspiring”, “transformative”, and even “life-changing”.
Our congratulations to Dr. Lim!
