In 28 years of teaching in the Department of Classics at UC, Alison’s approach to the classroom has been characterised by her engagement and her responsiveness – or as the Executive Dean of Arts, Professor Kevin Watson frames it: “focus on students, do excellent work, and continually have innovation in mind.” She builds constructive relationships with each student to aid their learning, but she also learns from their feedback and from the challenges they face so that she can tirelessly and incrementally improve her own teaching practice. Students speak of the respect that she has for them, the opportunities she creates for them to contribute and learn actively, and their delight that she makes an effort to learn their names, even in large 100-level classes – as one student writes, “She even knows my name! *squeals*”. Neurodiverse students praise her clearly structured classes and innovative scaffolded assignments that incorporate elements of Universal Design for Learning to make the material digestible, help them stay engaged, and keep them from becoming discouraged or overwhelmed, all without over-simplifying the content.
Beyond the classroom, over the past decade Alison has also become a pedagogical leader in her department, her faculty, and the University more broadly by sharing her passion for teaching and the lessons from her students with her colleagues. In her department, she has blazed a trail in academic skills training, redeveloping her courses into distance offerings, restructuring the Classics curriculum, and finding parallels between Māori concepts and Roman history that give students a greater understanding of modern New Zealand as well as the ancient world. In her faculty, first as an Associate Dean (Academic) and more recently as the Chair of the Faculty Learning & Teaching Committee, she has played an instrumental role in redeveloping the Bachelor of Arts to incorporate core courses that build academic skills, develop bicultural competence and confidence, and make students aware of the varied career opportunities and transferrable skills that a BA offers. Most recently, she has taken a leading role in helping her faculty respond to the challenges and opportunities of generative AI. Her contributions on pan-University initiatives include her work on the Assessment Policy & Principles and the Academic Integrity Module, an online module taken by nearly every undergraduate student. Professor Peter Field praises her courageous leadership in the teaching & learning space:
Alison is unafraid; when she believes in something, she is willing to stand up for herself and for what she thinks is best for Arts. Time and again.
