Professor Melody Neumann

Melody Neumann, Associate Professor in CSB and Director of the Human Biology Program, has been awarded the President’s Teaching Award, the highest honour for teaching at the University of Toronto. This award recognizes Prof Neumann’s sustained and ongoing excellence in Educational Leadership, Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation

The Award citation details Prof Neumann’s many accomplishments

Since joining the University of Toronto, Professor Neumann has developed, taught, and coordinated biology courses ranging from large first and second-year cell and molecular biology courses with labs, to flipped and online courses, to advanced project-based laboratory and team-based research courses.

Professor Neumann has created numerous animations related to cell and molecular biology as well as authentic assignments for assessing scientific writing, reasoning, and information literacy skills for both majors and non-majors. Professor Neumann is the creative inventor of Team Up!, a group based-assessment tool that has been successfully used by more than 20,000 students for active learning, peer teaching, and team skill development in large, hybrid, and fully online classes. Professor Neumann has been instrumental in the continued development and pedagogical support of Team Up! in more than 150 courses across all three University of Toronto campuses.

Professor Neumann is widely recognized as an innovative and skilled educator both within the University and beyond. She has been the primary or co-investigator on more than 15 successful institutional and provincial teaching and learning grants. She has been a recipient of the Faculty of Arts and Science Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award and is an inaugural member of the Faculty of Arts and Science Online Teaching Academy, where her innovations have provided benefit to instructors and students across U of T. Her expertise as an educator has been recognized by other institutions through her work as an external reviewer as part of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities’ Quality Assurance Framework and she has garnered recognition at the international level through invited presentations and two international awards for her group assessment application, Team Up!

We are proud to have her on our team. Congratulations!