Professor Andrea Fraser to receive the 2019 CMS Excellence in Teaching Award

OTTAWA, Ontario — The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) is pleased to announce that Professor Andrea Fraser (Dalhousie) has been named the 2019 recipient of the CMS Excellence in Teaching Award. Professor Fraser will present a prize lecture and receive her award at the CMS Summer Meeting at the University of Regina, June 7-10, 2019.

There is an overwhelming amount of positive student feedback that speaks to Dr. Fraser’s dedication and commitment to student success, and to the originality and exceptional clarity of her presentation. Students praise her ability to make difficult concepts easy and intuitive, and her lecturing style, which makes students feel they are “discovering” the material. Her colleagues write that “she very clearly cares and nurtures her students, and she embraces the weak students as well as challenges the strong”.

Dr. Fraser's innovation in designing courses extends to the development of textbooks that contain stimulating visuals and clear explanations, and sets her apart as an outstanding instructor of mathematics.

Dr. Malabika Pramanik from the Department of Mathematics at UBC speaks of Andrea's “passion for teaching mathematics and her total dedication in making mathematics accessible to all students, from the weakest to the strongest. In a discipline which is rooted in learning from peers, yet where teaching is often much maligned, I found her approach truly inspiring.”

Andrea Fraser earned her undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the University of Toronto, and her PhD from Princeton University in 1997 under Elias M. Stein. After a four year lecturer position at the University of New South Wales in Australia, she returned to Canada, where she has been a faculty member at Dalhousie University since 2001.