Iverson awarded 2008 SFU Award for Excellence in Teaching

Good teaching is an art. SFU’s 2008 Excellence in Teaching award winners exemplify that art, sharing their enthusiasm, knowledge and time in a way that encourages their students to learn and grow.

When SFU’s convocation ceremonies end, it’s not unusual for business graduands to rush over to SFU Business professor Rick Iverson to ask him to pose for photos, to tell him he was their favourite professor or to introduce him to their parents. As one of his colleagues says, “It’s actually a bit deflating to stand beside him at these receptions.”

Iverson, who teaches human resources, enjoys celebrating his students’ convocation. “It’s part of the closure,” he says, after a busy semester in which he has worked hard to integrate new research, experiences and even some fun into his lectures. Students, he says, should receive added value for attending classes, otherwise they might just as well surf the web. He also works hard to bring his personality into the classroom and to engage students in dialogue and analysis. After all, he says, “I’ve done close to 14 years of being a student myself. I know what boring is. And I know what stimulates, motivates and suffocates student learning.”

Students obviously appreciate his efforts, regularly giving him perfect ratings for his courses. He has been a fixture on the business faculty’s teaching honour roll since joining SFU in 2001 from the University of Melbourne, and received the faculty’s TD Canada Trust Teaching Excellence award in 2004. As one student nominator observes, “He is the only professor I have ever seen getting a standing ovation on the last day of class at the end of the semester.”