McMaster prof to receive OCUFA Teaching Award

McMaster professor Marshall Beier has been named as one of six winners of the 2013-14 Teaching Award from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). Beier will receive the award at a ceremony in Toronto on Oct. 25.

This latest award adds yet another honour to Beier's well-decorated teaching career. Beier received a McMaster Student Union Faculty Teaching Award in 2003, an Ontario Leadership in Faculty Teaching Award in 2007 and most recently, a 3M National Teaching Fellowship in 2012, among others over his 14-year tenure at McMaster.

"Something that’s become increasingly important to me in recent years is thinking about new ways to engage students as bona fide bearers of knowledge and as knowledge producers in their own right," Beier said in a press release. "Not merely as passive recipients of whatever might be imparted by way of the familiar ‘Sage on the stage’ model of teaching."

For the 2014-15 year, Beier is teaching courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Currently, Beier teaches a fourth-year course entitled Conceptual Issues: Global Politics and Advanced Issues in Global Security and a graduate course entitled Theories of International Politics and Advanced Concepts of International Relations Theory. Beier is also a contributor to McMaster Children and Youth University, an initiative that provides free lectures to teenagers on Saturday mornings.

“It’s always very exciting and very gratifying to be involved in new initiatives like this that present us with opportunities to think about how we might develop new ways of thinking about our roles as teachers,” said Beier.

Beier received his Ph.D in political science from York University, and joined the Department of Political Science at McMaster in 2000. He is currently researching the militarization of childhood funded by an insight grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.