This is a guest post by Swinburne's Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Professor Jennelle Kyd.  

I'd like to congratulate Swinburne's professional and academic staff for receiving six Citations in the Australian Awards for University Teaching, announced by the Federal Minister for Tertiary Education last week.

These highly prestigious citations - previously awarded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council but now conferred by the Commonwealth Office of Learning and Teaching following an extensive process of peer review - recognise quality teaching and outstanding contributions to student learning. 

For Swinburne, it's an impressive roll call of achievement in a diverse range of teaching areas:

• Dr Glenda Ballantyne, Anne Lyon, Dr Craig McIntosh, Dr Tim Moore and Elaine Speight-Burton for developing a model for embedding academic literacy skills across a range of programs
  
• Dr Diana Bossio for her work in setting up The Burn magazine and website which offers students the opportunity to be in involved in production
  
• Dr John Lourens for helping students develop resources to assist them to learn complex technical accounting principles and techniques
  
• Associate Professor Alex Mazzolini, Dr Rosemary Chang and Dr Llewellyn Mann for enhancing student learning through their comprehensive Scholarship of Teaching program
  
• Dr Jason Skues for his research-led strategies for undergraduate students, including those with learning disabilities, to help improve their engagement, participation and learning outcomes
  
• Swinburne Astronomy Online staff for inspiring a fascination in the universe through their online postgraduate degree courses in astronomy

As well as being a tribute to the personal efforts of each of our citation winners, these awards are also very strong recognition at the institutional level of the focus Swinburne has on creating great learning experiences for our students. Excellent, quality, teaching practice makes an essential and valuable contribution to the University's standing and reputation, but is often overshadowed by the profile of achievements in research. So, I am delighted that these awards provide an opportunity to remind us of the excellent achievements of staff for their teaching.

Swinburne's achievement is particularly impressive when the size of each university is taken into account. No university in Melbourne received more teaching awards per student. Swinburne also topped the charts on the number of teaching awards relative to the number of staff.

This recognition from the Australian Government builds on recent good results in the Good Universities Guide 2013 which once again ranked Swinburne as one of Melbourne's top universities for teaching quality, graduate satisfaction, generic skills development and staff qualifications.

In my brief time at Swinburne, I've been very impressed by the focus staff display in creating high-quality student experiences. As we navigate an increasingly competitive higher education environment, it is important that we continue to demonstrate that we are able to create value for our students.

These strong results are a tremendous encouragement as we continue to build a strong future for Swinburne.

Professor Jennelle Kyd
Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost