The Votes Are in for HSE's Best Teachers of 2015
Students and alumni of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and St. Petersburg have determined the Best Teachers of 2015. HSE First Vice Rector Vadim Radaev discusses the results of the voting.
Five rounds of elections for the Best Teachers of HSE have come to an end, with nearly half (48%) of the Moscow student body voting, including bachelor's and master's students. This figure is even higher for St. Petersburg at 56%. Turnout was fantastic! I would like to use this opportunity to thank all of the students who voted.
Students’ efforts paid off. There is a direct and very distinct connection between their activity (percentage of voters) and the number of the Best Teachers from a certain department or school (though students were also able to vote for instructors from other faculties). The more voters, the higher the number of teachers named the university’s best.
The rules dictating how elections, as well as the final count, would take place were not changed. As in previous years, the list of winners first includes the teachers for whom current students voted. This is followed by teachers selected by HSE alumni, and there is a third category for the academic supervisors of students who have won NIRS Research Awards. The names of many teachers were seen in two, and even three, lists at the same time, which is not surprising.
The status of Best Teacher is honourable and important in and of itself, but it also comes with a monetary reward
The results were counted using the same algorithm for the entire university. In counting up the votes, we looked at the ratio of voters to the overall number of students studying in a certain educational programme. Since the number of students in various programmes differs considerably, a correction factor was used to raise the threshold percentage of voters in small programmes and lower the percentage of voters in larger ones. We try to use this to create the fairest conditions for everyone and level the playing field as much as possible for instructors who teach in large and small programmes. This correction factor is also the same for the entire university. It seems to me that the system is now pretty balanced and works fairly well. Winners include representatives of all areas. At a certain point, people were worried that it would be difficult for English instructors to be among HSE’s Best Teachers, but this was not the case and the group is reasonably well represented among the winners.
One change we made this year was that we did away with a group for nominees who did not receive enough votes to be named one of the university’s best. Instead, the number of instructors broadened considerably with more receiving the full status of Best Teacher and the subsequent bonus. We were originally planning for there to be around 300 winners, but there were ultimately 343 winners from the full-time teaching staff, as well as 77 from the internal and external part-time faculty.
The status of Best Teacher is honourable and important in and of itself, but it also comes with a monetary reward. At the Moscow campus, this was 30,000 rubles per month for full-time staff this year and 15,000 rubles for part-time. In addition, being named a Best Teacher is considered an important factor when competing for teaching vacancies.
As in previous years, students were not only able to vote for their favourite instructors, but they could also write them letters. We received 250 of such ‘love letters’ this year, the majority of which have already been given to their addressees.
Congratulations to my colleagues from all programmes, faculties, schools, and departments who were voted HSE's Best Teachers of 2015!
You can find the full voting results here.
See also:
HSE’s Best Teacher Results Announced
The Best Teachers 2017 competition at HSE recently reached its completion. Although the overall procedure this year was the same as it was in 2016, the financial terms changed – the bonuses for the winners have been increased. Vadim Radaev, First Vice Rector of HSE, told us about the vote and some of the perks for all of the winners.
HSE Best Teachers Election Starts
From May 29 to June 18 students can vote for HSE’s best teachers of the academic year. This year there is no need to come to the university to vote. Students can submit their scores online via LMS.
HSE Awards Best Teachers of 2016
The Higher School of Economics has selected its Best Teachers of 2016. This year the voting process was different from previous years’, and First Vice Rector Vadim Radaev explains how.
New Voices: Research Projects and Ideas
In 2015 HSE laboratories and centres chose 24 scholars as post-doctoral fellows in the fields of philosophy, history, data analysis, finance, and cognitive studies. University bulletin HSE Look introduces these researchers as well as the teams with which they are now working.
HSE Lecturer Gives Paper at Harvard on Research into the Student Experience
On the 11th March 2015, Senior Research Fellow at the HSE Institute of Education Igor Chirikov was a guest lecturer at Harvard University. The lecture was part of the Student Experience in a Global Perspective course at the Faculty of Sociology and covered the methodology and results of research into student experience.
378
people were voted by students as HSE's best teachers in Moscow. Of these instructors, 273 work at the HSE full time, while the other 105 are part-time employees.
‘The More You Give, the More You Get’
Anita Soboleva, Associate Professor at the HSE Faculty of Law Department of the Theory of Law and Comparative Law, has been voted one of the best HSE teachers by students in 2012.
‘Each Student Studies on His Own, and the Teacher Is Only the Torch Which Lights His Way through a Dark Forest’
Ella Khabina, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics department of Higher Mathematics, was named one of the best HSE teachers conducting seminar classes in 2012, in a vote by students from the Faculty of Economics.
‘University Education Is about Teaching Students to Think Critically, Not about the Transfer of Knowledge’
Before coming to the HSE in 1999, Olga Kuzina, PhD, who is today Professor at the Department of Economic Sociology, had no experience in teaching. But she was chosen by the students as one of the best university lecturers and not for the first time in 2012.