Professor Micah Stickel (ECE), Vice-Dean, First Year for U of T Engineering, has been recognized for his outstanding teaching and educational leadership with the President’s Teaching Award. U of T’s highest honour for teaching, this award was established in 2006 to recognize sustained excellence in teaching, research on teaching and the integration of teaching and research. Recipients are designated members of the University’s Teaching Academy for a five-year term.
Micah Stickel joined the Faculty as a lecturer in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering in 2007. He is currently a professor in the Teaching stream and has served as Vice-Dean, First Year for the Faculty since 2012. He was recently appointed the next Acting Vice Provost, Students and Vice-Provostial Advisor on Students for U of T.
Stickel has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to improving the student experience, both as an educator and as an academic leader. He has led the development of several innovative curricular and co-curricular initiatives to enhance the experience of our students inside and out of the classroom. He has also worked to thoughtfully integrate new teaching innovations and technological tools into his courses, and was one of the first in the Faculty to use a tablet to teach. The assessment he and a colleague carried out on the impact of teaching with tablets was presented at the 2008 Frontiers in Education Conference, and resulted in his being named one of nine New Faculty Fellows from across North America.
Stickel has been on the forefront of creating collaborative learning environments through the introduction of greater active learning components in his courses. These include the implementation of the Faculty’s fist inverted (flipped) classroom, and the careful use of online discussion forums. He has also had a significant impact on curricular development in ECE and other engineering programs. His accomplishments include a significant redesign of the first year engineering curriculum and the creation of APS100H1F: Orientation to Engineering.
In addition, Stickel has long been an advocate for greater equity and inclusion within the Faculty. He co-created and co-chaired the Engineering Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Action Group in 2018, and has been a leader in the development and implementation of the Faculty’s Broad-Based Admissions Strategy. He has received five departmental teaching awards, and received the Faculty’s Early Career Teaching Award in 2012. In 2014 the American Society for Engineering Education named him one of their Top 20 under 40.
“As both a teacher and an administrative leader, Micah is continuously moving the Faculty forward in terms of how we engage with our students on the curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular levels,” said Chris Yip, dean of U of T Engineering. “I know he will continue to make outstanding contributions to U of T’s educational mission, both in his new Vice-Provostial roles and now as a member of the University’s Teaching Academy.”
