Dean's Awards for Excellence 2026 | MNHS

Excellence in Education

The Dean's Awards for Excellence in Education are awarded across six categories:

  • Excellence in Education - Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning
  • Excellence in Education - Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning - Indigenous Education Citation
  • Excellence in Education - Teaching Excellence
  • Excellence in Education - Innovation in Learning & Teaching
  • Excellence in Education - Educational Leadership
  • Excellence in Education - Programs that Enhance Learning

Watch the videos with our award winners below.

Our Award Winners

  • Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning

    Ms Siobhan Hardiman
    Department of Social Work, School of Primary and Allied Health Care

    Siobhan Hardiman is leading a sector-first approach to trauma-informed family violence education within allied health and psychology, advancing family violence capability across both specialist and core health curricula. Siobhan’s work reshapes how future health professionals are prepared to recognise, respond to, and prevent family violence across multiple disciplines at Monash University. Siobhan developed and coordinates SWM3127 Foundations for Family Violence Practice, the first dedicated family violence unit within an undergraduate psychology degree in Victoria and across the Group of Eight. She also coordinates SWM5127 Family Violence and Social Work Practice in the Master of Social Work and has led curriculum embedded across psychology, paramedicine, nursing and midwifery, and social work, reaching hundreds of students annually. Siobhan’s approach integrates trauma-informed and practice-based learning with evidence-informed theoretical, policy, and legislative frameworks, supporting students to build reflective practice and scaffolded skills development. Grounded in principles of social justice and trauma-informed education, Siobhan’s curriculum prepares students to engage ethically and compassionately with complex practice realities. This work positions Monash University as a national leader in family violence education and contributes directly to Impact 2030’s “Thriving Communities” priority. Students report increased confidence, preparedness, and capability in responding to family violence.

  • Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning

    Associate Professor Khoa Cao
    Monash Medical School

    Medical technology and AI are rapidly transforming clinical practice, yet until recently, Australian medical education offered few structured pathways for students to engage with this shift. As recently as 2023, Monash medical students interested in medtech largely had to chart their own course. Today, they enter an integrated ecosystem Associate Professor Cao designed and now leads at the Monash Medical School built on three principles: project-based learning for curious students, sustained mentorship for exceptional students, and a highly supportive and tight-knit network for all. Nexus, the professional medtech community established by Associate Professor Cao’s team, has engaged nearly 1,000 students through bootcamps, workshops, hackathons, competitions, and experiential events. From this group, exceptional students are selected into Associate Professor Cao’s lab for research projects supported by one-on-one mentorship and small-group teaching. The ecosystem supports student-led initiatives across all Monash Partners hospitals, has built partnerships with leading institutions, and has informed educational processes at Monash and internationally. Participant outcomes further reflect this impact, including Women in STEM Awards, AI Policy Fellowships at UC Berkeley, investment roles at leading Australian venture firms, Hult Prize wins, and scholarships to Stanford University.

  • Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning

    Dr Jon Lee
    School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health

    An estimated 140,000 diagnostic errors occur in Australia annually with 21,000 cases of serious harm and approximately 2000-4000 deaths. As an emergency doctor for over 20 years, Dr Lee saw doctors making the same diagnostic errors he had made, year after year, so he set himself the challenge to tackle this. The Clinical Diagnostic Reasoning In Action (CDRIA) series is a multi-award-winning collection of 21 live and 20 pre-recorded lectures he developed to help third-year medical students think like a doctor, to improve thoroughness and efficiency, while also decreasing the incidence of missed diagnoses. It utilises real patient cases, and the latest technological hardware and software, combined with pedagogically proven techniques of spaced repetition, interleaving, quizzes and flipped classrooms to enhance learning. Using digital stethoscopes combined with interactive video allowing students to see and hear what the patient looks and sounds like simultaneously, the approach has not been utilised anywhere else in the world to Dr Lee’s knowledge. Video also allows teaching cases, traditionally limited to those at the bedside, to be utilised year after year by hundreds of students across Australia and Malaysia. The series has received widespread acclaim by students, faculty and wider medical education community at conferences, for its innovative approach for over five years running.

  • Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning

    Dr Alan McCubbin
    Department of Nutrition Dietetics & Food, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health

    Our students are increasingly demographically diverse, culturally diverse, and neurodiverse. This presents challenges for optimising student engagement in large, diverse cohorts. Over the past five years, Dr McCubbin has implemented several practices to improve student engagement in the Bachelor of Nutrition Science, including multimodal asynchronous content to support varied student learning styles and preferences; signposting scaffolded content to encourage reflection and knowledge consolidation; ‘rotating’ activities during in-person workshops, incorporating multi-sensory learning principles to complement screen-and-whiteboard-based learning; assessment redesign to suit different student academic strengths; consumer engagement with students as a form of authentic assessment, and a cross-unit approach to artificial intelligence for learning and assessment. Dr McCubbin’s underlying educational philosophy is that student and staff engagement are intertwined. Practices that boost student engagement have engaged staff at their core. While evidence-informed teaching practices are helpful, ultimately students rise or fall to the level of engagement of their educators. The impact of Dr McCubbin’s pedagogical approaches has been consistently recognised through Student Evaluation of Teaching and Units (SETU), student engagement committees and internal unit evaluations. Beyond student cohorts, Dr McCubbin has also been requested to present these practices to the Department of Nutrition, Dietetics & Food’s teaching team and the faculty’s Educational Excellence Showcase.

  • Indigenous Education Citation

    Mr David Byrnes, Dr Lisa Hall, Mr Kamil Chetty, Ms Louise Hodgetts
    Monash Rural Health

    The Monash Rural Health (MRH) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Framework (2021-2030) outlines four framing pillars, one of which is ‘embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and content into curriculum’. The program focuses on how Monash Rural Health North West are implementing this pillar on the ground. The footprint for Monash Rural Health North West extends from their GP Hubs in Gisborne and Woodend all the way up to the MRH site in Mildura and includes everything in between. The education teams across the whole region, led by the MRH Indigenous Community Engagement Lead, David Byrnes, are committed to genuinely embedding Indigenous perspectives across the curriculum, not as a one-off activity, but as a series of place-based, co-designed, interconnecting experiences that have grown out of engagement with local First Nations people and communities. Embedding these experiences into the time that students spend in the North West Victorian region helps student build their knowledge, understanding, empathy and capacity, so that when they enter the workforce, they not only feel more confident as graduates capable of culturally-safe and anti‐racist practice, but have a strong framework for how to continually improve their practice as they live and work on different country, and support the health needs of different communities through their careers as doctors.

  • Teaching Excellence

    BMA Team - Associate Professor Sharon Flecknoe, Dr Amanda Davies, Dr Kate Carroll
    Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute

    The BMA team has transformed two large first-year human bioscience units by treating students’ self-efficacy, belonging and academic challenge as inseparable drivers of success. Since 2016, their continually evolving learning design has become a sustained example of inclusive, active and evidence-informed bioscience education. BMA1011 and BMA1012 are core first-year units, servicing up to 600 allied health students annually across two campuses and four degrees. Historically, bioscience units are associated with fear, anxiety and high fail rates, and fail rates had reached approximately 30 percent. In response, the team redesigned the learning experience around structured online preparation, active team-based workshops, personalised feedback, gamification, inclusive practice and a commitment to facilitating student belonging. Their Pedagogy of Care approach is grounded in the belief that students learn best when they feel known, supported, challenged and capable. Weekly learning is carefully scaffolded so students build confidence before class, construct and apply understanding collaboratively during class, and experience bioscience education as social, achievable and relevant. The team has demonstrated sustained impact for over a decade: fail rates have fallen from around 30 percent to around 5 percent, attendance remains at 90 percent, and their reflective approach, that continually evolves to meet the needs of our learners, now informs teaching practice across Monash and nationally.

  • Teaching Excellence

    Dr Georgina Stephens Mitchell
    Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute

    Medical students often perceive anatomy as isolated facts to be memorised, yet clinical practice requires the application of anatomical knowledge to care for people whose bodies and preferences are unique. My teaching philosophy centres the human in human anatomy, using anatomy education to develop not only foundational knowledge, but professional capabilities essential for practice, including uncertainty tolerance, ethical and person-centred care, and appreciation of bodily diversity. Guided by a sustained program of education research, Dr Stephens has led and evaluated a comprehensive redesign of the medical anatomy curriculum through research-informed innovations that build students’ knowledge and confidence in core concepts while creating authentic opportunities to practise navigating uncertainty in healthcare contexts. Her impact extends beyond students through open-access resources used globally to support educators in preparing learners for uncertainty, professional development initiatives for early career anatomy educators, and contributions informing educational and regulatory policy. Recognised through student-voted, school and faculty awards for teaching for innovation and student learning, alongside exemplary student feedback, this work transforms anatomy from a memorisation-based subject into an educational foundation for developing reflective, uncertainty-tolerant and person-centred future clinicians.

  • Innovation in Learning and Teaching

    Mr John Ryan
    Department of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, School of Primary and Allied Health Care

    Mr John Ryan transformed the teaching of Image-guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) from traditional lectures into an authentic, simulation-based learning experience using existing university technologies. IGRT is critical for delivering precise and safe cancer radiation therapy treatment, yet students often enter clinical placements without sufficient opportunity to practise imaging-based decision-making. To address this gap, Mr Ryan developed a scalable simulation model integrating clinical software, interactive learning resources, and structured digital portfolios across both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. This allows students on campus and online to practise real-world workflows before entering clinical environments. This approach has demonstrably improved student confidence, capability, and readiness for clinical placement. Students report stronger understanding and reduced anxiety, while objective assessment data show progression in technical and clinical skills. Importantly, enhanced preparedness has enabled a two-week reduction in clinical placement duration without compromising competency outcomes, improving both educational efficiency and sustainability.

  • Educational Leadership

    Professor Michelle Lazarus
    Centre for Human Anatomy Education, Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute

    Anatomy is one of the oldest foundational sciences in health professions education (HPE). While its longevity provides stability, it can also foster uncritical loyalty to ‘what has been’. Anatomy is not simply the study of structures; it examines bodies as understood within socio-cultural contexts. The discipline both shapes and is shaped by society. Historically, the male body was privileged as the norm, embedding racialised and ableist interpretations of difference as ‘anomalies’, often under the guise of being evidence-based. Without critical reflection, anatomy risks perpetuating exclusionary understandings of humankind. The field continues to grapple with how to hold the tension between the structural constancy of the human form and the evolving cultural forces that shape its meaning. Professor Lazarus’ leadership addresses this gap through intentional, evidence-based, community-centred, and collaborative approaches. Her internationally-recognised work on navigating uncertainty advances an ‘uncertainty-informed’ approach to anatomy education. This supports educators and learners to engage with discomfort, fostering curiosity, openness, and critical reflection. These capabilities are essential as the discipline responds to shifting cultural norms and technological change. Described as “courageous,” her leadership challenges entrenched dogma and enables critical engagement with issues such as gendered and racialised representations of the body and the role of ethics in anatomy education - enhancing our wellbeing in the process.

  • Programs that Enhance Learning

    From Partnerships to Practice: Building the Community and Public Health Nutrition Workforce
    Dr Suzanne Kleve, Dr Alexandra Chung, Ms Stacey Holden
    Department of Nutrition, Dietetics & Food, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health

    Every year, students enter the Master of Nutrition and Dietetics motivated to improve health and wellbeing. But passion alone does not create workforce-ready graduates. Students become workforce‐ready when they work with real teams, on real projects, with real community partners. At the same time, community organisations need graduates who understand community‐led practice and can collaborate across food, health and social systems. The Partnerships to Practice program addresses both these needs. Each year, 80 Masters students successfully complete this nationally recognised program. Their journey begins with foundational coursework and culminates in a 10-week placement in diverse organisations, including local government, social enterprises, and Aboriginal-controlled health services. Learning experiences are created in partnership, providing authentic practice experiences that directly contribute to student learning and workforce capacity. The program’s pedagogy is grounded in theoretical foundations which scaffold experiential learning, allowing students to develop professional capability through practice and reflection in real-world contexts. The program produces graduates who are skilled, confident and ready to meet the demands of the nutrition and dietetics workforce. The success of the program is evident in employment outcomes for students, changes to organisational policy and practice, and improved community nutrition outcomes.

  • Programs that Enhance Learning

    MNHS Feedback Literacy Module, Communication in Health Professions Education Unit (COHPE)
    Dr Amir Rouhshad, Dr Marcelo Maghidman, Dr Sharon Yahalom, Associate Professor Catherine Flynn, Associate Professor Sheila Vance, Dr Averil Grieve

    Through collaborative educational partnerships and drawing on task-based learning, the COHPE unit team has created an innovative, scalable, accessible, practical and interactive resource that has enhanced students’ feedback literacy, which is in alignment with the faculty’s vision for assessments. Positively received by students across 10 courses across the faculty, the module has demonstrated a statistically significant enhancement in students’ feedback literacy and transformed cognitive and emotional engagement with feedback, thereby strengthening the educational experience for students and educators. The module demonstrates broad accessibility and relevance across diverse student populations, as evidenced by participation from students across year levels, programs, and domestic and international cohorts. Supported by the team’s sustained promotional activities within and beyond the faculty, uptake of the module has increased from two departments in 2023 to nine departments across three faculties in 2026, demonstrating the module’s practicality and scalability across diverse disciplinary contexts. The module has been exceptionally well-received by educators in multiple programs and faculties and has become part of their time-efficient response strategy to widespread student challenges in making use of feedback. The module enriches student learning experience at Monash University and, by fostering their ability to engage positively with feedback, heightens their work-readiness.