Braden Evans, a PhD student in the School of Environmental Sciences, will receive the inaugural Associate Vice-President Academic (AVPA) Teaching Assistant Award of Excellence.

This is the first U of G teaching award to recognize the contributions of teaching assistants (TAs) across all seven colleges. It will be presented to Evans Aug. 29 at U of G’s annual Graduate Student University Teaching Conference.

He was nominated for the award by SES professor Stephen Marshall and students Lucy Welsh and Grace Pitman for his work in the course “Insect Diversity and Biology.”

There were 14 nominees for the inaugural award.

AVPA Serge Desmarais said: “Those who wrote letters of support mentioned Braden’s maturity, competency and enthusiasm for the task of improving the quality of undergraduate education, ranging from developing innovative lab activities to mentoring undergraduate researchers.”

Evans completed his own biological sciences degree at U of G in 2000 and holds an MBA from York University. His PhD supervisor is Prof. Rebecca Hallett.