A passion for teaching
With senior scientist Dr Meike Akveld, an extraordinarily dedicated and innovative pedagogue is recognised with the 2021 Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching. She received the award as part of this year's ETH Day celebrations.
Since 2006, the students and student associations at ETH Zurich choose every year the recipient of the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching – to select among all ETH members with a teaching assignment one who stands out in the quality of their teaching. This year, this coveted recognition goes to Meike Akveld, a senior scientist at the Department of Mathematics, and according to the nomination letter from the Association of Mathematics and Physics Students at ETH (VMP) a "highly capable pedagogue who also outside of her lectures remains committed to helping students, in questions of pedagogy and equality, as well as against misconduct". That breath, dedication and passion are themes that pervade Akveld's entire career.
She is clearly one of the best lecturers at ETH.VMP
The beauty of mathematics
For her, mathematics is far more than just an academic discipline. "During my studies I started to see the real beauty of mathematics, and that beauty kept my passion alive and is the driving force behind my motivation to teach." A native of the Netherlands, she studied mathematics in the UK, at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge. In 1997 she came to ETH Zurich for her doctoral studies on symplectic geometry, under Professor Dietmar Salamon, which she finished in 2000. Akveld then decided to stay in Switzerland. "Because I simply love the mountains," says the keen climber, skier and swimmer. What followed was a somewhat unusual path that saw her training as a secondary-school teacher, a profession in which she worked for ten years at the MNG Rämibühl in Zurich, which is renowned for its mathematics and science curricula.
A further change of direction came in 2007, with an offer to teach at D-MATH. She took up this opportunity, and challenge, and returned to her alma mater. Before long, it would become evident that the decision was to the great benefit of her students in various departments, including D-MATH, D-BAUG, D-INFK, D-PHYS and D-ITET. In 2009, Akveld was awarded for the first time with a Golden Owl. A second such award recognizing exceptional teaching followed in 2014, and throughout the years her lectures were rated consistently high, often among the highest across ETH. "She is clearly one of the best lecturers at ETH," writes the VMP. Notably, the high grades were for service lectures in a subject that, it might be fair to say, is not necessarily among every student’s favourites. Her desire to transcend mere transfer of knowledge obviously strikes a chord. "Naturally you have to learn the basics, but equally important, you have to develop some level of intuition for what mathematics is, what it enables, and what its role is in our society," says Akveld.
Broad engagement
That broader perspective to conveying mathematics is reflected in Akveld's numerous other activities. This starts with the development of new tools for teaching, such as making, together with colleagues, the flipped-classroom concept workable for large classes with single instructors, and close collaborations with the Educational Development and Technology department at ETH to optimize, for example, how tests are designed or the use of Moodle (for instance the introduction of the STACK mathematics plugin). A further focus is the interface between secondary- and tertiary-level education. Akveld had an important role in developing an online course for newly enrolled first-year students that lets them check and refresh their mathematical knowledge before starting at ETH. For the development of this so-called Bridging Course, Akveld and her colleagues Professor Norbert Hungerbühler, Dr Alexander Caspar and Heinz Rasched were nominated last year for the KITE Award, and reached the stage of the final four projects out of 34 nominated. At an even broader level, Akveld currently presides over the external page Association Kangourou sans Frontières (AKSF), in which 'math lovers' from more than 90 countries across the world share their passion, in particular with school children. They hold highly popular external page annual national competitions – in Switzerland alone some 40’000 pupils participate every year.
But it is not all about broad spread and large audiences. At the centre of all these activities is the individual. This is important to Akveld. For example, she was actively involved in the development and promotion of the howsETHgoing survey on equal opportunities and mental health of the ETH student organisation VSETH, from which ETH-wide and department-specific recommendations were derived. Furthermore, she is the co-chair of the goMATH committee, an initiative for supporting the development of women and young talent in mathematics. The goal of these activities is clear to Akveld: "Society should not prevent anyone from following their passion".
Many 'firsts'
With Meike Akveld not only a passionate teacher and communicator is now recognised with the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching, but also for the first time ever a woman. That role as a trailblazer is a further recurrent theme in her life. In Cambridge she was one of the rare women taking 'Part III of the Mathematical Tripos', a one-year Masters course considered to be one of the most demanding mathematics courses worldwide. At MNG in Zurich, she was the first woman elected to be a mathematics teacher. And if being now the first female recipient of the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching wouldn't be enough – it is as well the first time someone who does not hold a professor title is recognised with this award.
