David Thomson Award for Graduate Supervision and Teaching

Ian Butler

Department of Chemistry

1) For me, the greatest challenge is certainly finding the right balance between giving students their independence and, at the same time, providing them with sufficient guidance to allow them to complete their work in a constructive and timely manner. This is a particularly important situation for both undergraduate and graduate research students, because their own experiences are often reflected in how they treat others in the future when they themselves become managers or research directors.

2) Giving students confidence in their own ideas and encouraging them to think on their own. The most important factor for me, however, is mutual respect, without which it is impossible to communicate with one another in any meaningful way. A good teacher is one who has a high respect for his or her students. The learning process then becomes a joint one with everyone benefiting.