Students celebrating teaching excellence Edinburgh University prides itself on delivering a high-quality teaching experience. The student Union recognises this and every year runs the EUSA Awards 2924. As the student union explains: “these provide students with an opportunity to thank staff for their hard work, whilst celebrating the very best of teaching and support at the University of Edinburgh.” Here in Edinburgh Surgery Online we are very proud to say that our team gets nominated for teaching awards every year. Our very own Chantelle Aftab, Deputy Programme Director for ChM Trauma & Orthopaedics, was crowned ‘Overall Teacher of the Year’ within the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine (CMVM) during 2022, but every year Edinburgh Surgery Online teaching and support staff get multiple nominations for their contributions and 2024 was no exception. This year multiple members of the team received nominations for their contributions to the student experience here at Edinburgh Surgery Online. Four Deputy Programme Directors (Oluseye Ogunbayo, Chantelle Aftab, Heather Ellis, Louise Buckley) were all nominated in the category Overall Teacher of the Year, while two Deputy Programme Directors (Chantelle Aftab and Uzma-Tufail-Hanif) were nominated for the Cohort Lead of the Year role. Cohort Leads are responsible for leading on wider student experience for their students and run live sessions, workshops and other opportunities to support their students to get the most from their Edinburgh University experience. Uzma Tufail-Hanif was also nominated for the Supervisor of the Year category. The nominee had this to say about Uzma Tufail-Hanif: “Miss Tufail-Hanif is really very supportive for the past three years I am in the vascular and Endovascular master program, she is always contacting me….. giving me guidance and Follow ups very inspiring. I believe she gave me the best the most of the learning opportunity. I really appreciate her being around chasing my work, zoom meeting and guidance” As a relative newcomer to the university and in a role that was only recently created, we are also delighted that Suzanne Reid, our student Advisor for the ChM programmes, was nominated for Student Advisor of the Year for her work supporting international students. More widely, Louise (who this year reached the longlist for Overall Teacher of the Year), was also nominated in the outstanding course category for Evidence Based Veterinary Medicine in Clinical Practice. This is a course she delivers as part of her wider teaching activities within CMVM, as part of her passion for evidence-based healthcare principles, and which feeds back into her support of ChM Urology students. Louise Buckley had this to say: I was delighted that students nominated so many of the Edinburgh Surgery Online for teaching awards as this really does make us feel valued as key contributors to student experience, something the whole team work tirelessly to achieve all year round”. You can read more about the Edinburgh University Student Association (EUSA) Awards here: https://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/whatson/awards/teachingawards Publication date 21 May, 2024