Award for engineering tutor

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Aug 31, 2004

Staff and students have heaped praise on an engineering tutor who has been awarded the University of Bradford's coveted Award for Teaching Excellence.

Staff and students have heaped praise on an engineering tutor who has been awarded the University of Bradford's coveted Award for Teaching Excellence.

Dr Darwin Liang was given a GBP 500 prize and says he uses a people-oriented approach to teaching, with students treated as mature adults and respect.

"I am always approachable, knowledgeable, friendly, trustworthy and helpful".

"I think that is what makes a good teacher - a very student-friendly person who puts a lot of effort into the care of one's students", he said.

His approach certainly seems to work.

Comments from Darwin's students include: "I thank Dr Liang for his work during the year, and taught us the things we didn't know and that's why we are here for: thank you".

Commenting on his teaching skills, Vice Chancellor Professor Chris Taylor said: "Darwin has expert subject knowledge in the technically challenging area of power electronics, and this is combined with a natural gift for being able to get across difficult material and ideas in a simple and understandable way, often combined with a sense of humour".

Liang's approach to teaching students stems from his personal experiences as an international student and teacher, having studied and taught on three continents.

Liang started his teaching career in 1974 as a teaching assistant while he was a student himself at the University of California at Berkeley before moving to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in New York for his first masters degree.

He has also worked at Hong Kong Polytechnic as a lecturer, studied for his second masters degree at University of Bradford, and worked at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland as a research associate, before moving to the University of Bradford as a lecturer in 1992.

Liang regularly keeps contact with past students - some sent him Chinese New Year cards from Singapore, some visited him at Bradford after their graduation, and he was recently invited to attend a former student's wedding in Athens, almost five years after his graduation.

Such feedbacks are probably the best awards that he can achieve, and he is grateful for being remembered by his former students.

"I thoroughly enjoy my time spent with students, who make it enjoyable to come back to work every day even on a rainy day".

"I now have a lot of places to visit in the world if I happen to retire and be able to afford to travel, as there will be former students of mine waiting at their home country to entertain me during my visit".

In typical Liang style, he plans to use the GBP 500 prize on materials for building a new personal computer system to keep up with the latest technology and pass this knowledge onto his own students in his "Practical computer architecture" module.

Displaying the same enthusiasm which justly brought him the award, Liang states his motto is: "If you cannot do it yourself, you do not have a right to teach it".