York professor honoured with teaching excellence award





 


Above: Dawn Bazely (wearing red vest) with students at a site


York biology Professor Dawn Bazely has received the Faculty of Pure & Applied Science Award for Excellence in Teaching. Bazely was nominated for the honour by her students, the second time her name has been put forward for the award.


Bazely, an ecologist with degrees in biogeography and botany from the University of Toronto, and a doctorate in behavioural ecology from the Zoology Department at the University of Oxford, has taught ecology at all undergraduate levels. Her undergraduate course Web site has been recognized by Blackwell Science, the publisher of the second-year ecology course text, which lists the site as a curriculum resource on its own Web site.


Right: Bazely, on the right, with one of her students, Anne Gravel, putting twig samples into a bag


Bazely came to York in 1990 from a research fellowship at Cambridge University. Since arriving at York, she has done field-based research in such diverse locations as Scotland, Sweden, Newfoundland and sites throughout southwestern Ontario. She has taken many students out into the field with her. “This is the part of my teaching experience which I enjoy immensely,” she said.


Bazely’s most recent publications include papers about habitat restoration at Point Pelee National Park in the journals Conservation Biology and Biological Conservation, and a new book, Ecology and Control of Introduced Plants, published by the Cambridge University Press which she co-authored with her colleague, Judy Myers.