Andrew Gemino on his Excellence in Teaching award

It’s not unusual for business professor Andrew Gemino to encounter former students who still remember the concepts he taught them almost 20 years ago.His quirky demonstrations of abstract concepts are always engaging and are one of the reasons he received a 2010 SFU Excellence in Teaching award last month.

He recalls, for example, a rainy summer semester when he told students of the uncanny correlation he had noticed between the number of people on the beach and a sunny day. The conclusion: “To bring out the sun, we need to get more people on the beach.”

That’s when he put yellow cellophane on the overhead projector, played the song “Wipe Out”, donned his sunglasses and laid down on the lectern. And after that bit of fun, the rest of the lecture explained how correlation differs from causality.

“I like to have fun with things,” says Gemino. “People learn by engaging, not by sitting for three hours watching PowerPoint slides.”

Gemino continues to do something special in each lecture, whether he’s teaching 20 students or 200.

“I disagree that you can’t do things in a large class that you can do in a small class,” he says. “You can’t expect the same level of personal interaction, but students can engage in both environments.”

He’s most proud of a project-management class he has developed with other colleagues that requires students to work in teams on a project that improves a community of their choice.

“When students work on projects they design, their level of engagement is huge,” says Gemino, noting that these projects often help the needy, for example by raising thousands of dollars for charity or gathering clothing and support for disaster victims.

“I call it learning by doing with others, for others.”

Gemino is currently the associate dean of undergraduate business programs, but is satisfying his need to teach by coaching basketball and soccer.

“Teaching is in my blood,” he says, “I have to have my teaching fix.”