Congratulations go to Andrew Holm, a TA within the Mathematics Department, who was recently nominated for the 2010 Teaching Assistants’ Training Program (TATP) Teaching Excellence Award.  Out of 189 nominated TAs (with over 500 nominations) he was one of 12 chosen to be short-listed for the award.

The purpose of the award is to recognize outstanding achievements of teaching assistants across all four divisions in the School of Graduate Students at the University of Toronto.  It is a great achievement for Andrew and once again recognizes the excellence in our TAs within the department.

When asked about the nomination and if he had any advice to give to other fellow TAs Andrew had the following to say:

“I have always felt a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment when I help others and share my knowledge and experiences to further their learning. For that reason, I have always aspired to be a teacher.

I think that teaching offers an opportunity to instil a love of learning into students, while the same time, playing a role in the shaping of our future.

Teaching is an ongoing learning process. Through experience and feedback from students and other teachers, I hope to continually improve my own teaching abilities.

In addition to providing important learning opportunities, teachers need to foster good character development by modelling kindness, respect, and good citizenship.

I believe I posses all these traits which are some reasons why I was selected for this award.”

The Department extends it’s congratulations to Andrew for this honoured nomination!

Xiao Liu, a second year PhD student currently working with Professor Catherine Sulem, was recently honoured by the CMS for his poster presentation on “Numerical Simulations of Resonant Tunneling of Fast Solitons for Nonlinear Schrodinger Equations”.

In the student poster session three posters were chosen to receive a prize; one by AARMS, one by the President of the CMS and one by the CMS Student Committee.  Xiao Liu was honoured to receive the CMS President’s  Award.

Xiao presented his poster at the 2010 CMS Summer Meeting to attendees.  The event itself attracts mathematicians from across the country and is designed to highlight and honour the best mathematicians.  It is a series of lectures, seminars, poster presentations and socials designed to bring mathematicians together.  This year’s event was held in Fredericton, New Brunswick from June 4 – 6, 2010.