Congratulations to Dr. David McDonald on receiving the 2023-2024 Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award for his course, Living Lake Ontario: From the Local to the Global.
The Dean’s Teaching and Learning Excellence Award recognizes high-impact activities or curriculum designs that enrich the student learning experience through evidence-based teaching strategies.
The Dean’s Office noted that Dr. McDonald’s course, “Living Lake Ontario: From the Local to the Global, blended together critical issues of social justice, pollution, development, impacts of colonialism, and climate change. The use of experiential learning, non-traditional forms of assessment, and the connection of individual actions linked to larger impacts is high-quality and innovative”.
“This is a fundamentally innovative course that actively links the local to the global; science to politics; and scholarly research to applied practical experience,” Dr. Marcus Taylor, DEVS Department Head says. “Students engage diverse topics from water quality and toxicology through to contested public access to desired lakefront areas. Embracing key FAS priorities such as foregrounding experiential learning; unpacking the Sustainable Development Goals; and promoting Indigenous reconciliation and resurgence; this is a course unlike any other at Queen’s”.
“My approach to teaching is to pick a topic that I am excited about and to try and make it equally exciting for students,” Dr. McDonald explains. “This is relatively easy in Global Development Studies given the enormity of the topics we address, such environmental justice and decolonization. I work to cultivate an inquisitive atmosphere that encourages students to express themselves in multiple ways (eg. essays, video productions, art work), as well as having fun (eg. jumping into Lake Ontario and cleaning fish). Making the link between the local and global is also important as it allows students to see how their daily lives are linked to larger processes, and how our individual actions may (or may not) affect these larger dynamics. Water access and sustainability is arguably the most universal of all global challenges, making an investigation of Lake Ontario a particularly useful lens.”
Learn more about Dr. McDonald’s course, Living Lake Ontario: From the Local to the Global by listening to his interview with Bill Welychka (Global TV)