Lesley Biggs

Master Teacher Award - Spring 2009

An award-winning researcher in alternative medicine, and a skilled and generous administrator, Lesley Biggs’s primary distinction has been as a creative, passionate, and engaging teacher, earning her this year’s Master Teacher Award. Her undergraduate training at the University of Toronto in psychology (BA 1980), and master’s and doctoral work in behavioural sciences (MSc 1983; PhD 1990), and her teaching in sociology and in women’s and gender studies at the U of S have made her a instructor with an extraordinary breadth and depth of knowledge.

Always looking for creative ways to communicate complex ideas, Biggs revises her curricula and teaching methods as she learns more from classroom experiences. Committed to inclusive learning spaces, Biggs invests deeply in helping students develop a full range of academic skills. Widely recognized as a model teacher, she is a sought-after leader for workshops designed to enhance the skills of the next generation of teachers.

Biggs was a prime mover in the curricular and administrative development of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, and is co-editor of a widely-adopted textbook. Her enthusiasm for the communication of knowledge make her the kind of teacher that students remember gratefully long after they have left the university.