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Outstanding ACU lecturers win National AAUT Citation Teaching Award

Congratulations to Dr Duncan Cook and Associate Professor Nick Carter for being awarded an Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) ‘Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning’. These awards are highly competitive and exemplify excellence in teaching across Australia.

Professor Zlatko Skrbis, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) is pleased to announce the Australian Catholic University AAUT Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning 2018. The University is proud of this prodigious achievement, which is a testimony to the calibre and expertise of ACU’s academic staff.

The successful ACU Interdisciplinary Humanities Education Abroad (IHEA) team members are:

Dr Duncan Cook (Senior Lecturer, Geography) and Associate Professor Nick Carter (Associate Professor, Modern History) Faculty of Education and Arts: For designing and delivering an international interdisciplinary humanities curriculum that inspires students to develop cross-discipline and cross-cultural skills, create new knowledge and grow as individuals.

The Interdisciplinary Humanities Education Abroad (IHEA) team consists of Dr Duncan Cook and Associate Professor Nick Carter who are both senior academics in the National School of Arts at ACU.  They have been researchers and university educators for 10 and 27 years respectively, holding academic positions in the UK, USA, New Zealand and Australia.  Dr Cook began working at ACU in 2012, Associate Professor Carter joined in 2013 and both are established experts in their fields evidenced by strong publication records, grants and ongoing research impact.

The IHEA team share a background rich in interdisciplinary, international, and field-based teaching and research. Since 2013 the team has collaboratively developed and delivered innovative international interdisciplinary educational experiences in the humanities at ACU, namely a 10-week Global Studies International Internship Partnership Program in Asia, and a unique two-week interdisciplinary History-Geography field school in Rome/central Italy (with colleagues in the School of Arts). These programs use an innovative blend of experiential, hands-on, and reflective learning strategies to inspire and enable students to develop cross-discipline and cross-cultural skills, create new knowledge and grow as individuals.

Both team members have played important roles in the development and delivery of ACU’s Global Studies double degree program, which in turn, led to the development of the Global Studies International Internships Partnership Program (GSIIPP) student opportunities. Dr Cook and Associate Professor Carter have held state and national level program director roles for ACU’s Global Studies program since 2013, and Associate Professor Carter was the Chair (and Dr Cook co-chair) of the Global Studies Program review in 2016.

Together they have been acknowledged for constituting a significant and sustained contribution to the internationalisation of the humanities curriculum at ACU.

The AAUT website has information about the awards program.