“Ian is a wonderful teacher who is flexible with his teaching style and is willing to meet his students where they are at in their learning journey. He’s very thorough with his explanations and is willing to give alternative descriptions if material is not understood at first. He also adds humour into his lectures to make them more enjoyable.”
A recipient of a 2026 Teaching Recognition Award, Ian has been a faculty member in the Electronics and Computer Engineering department since 2003 and an instructor in the Environmental Technology department since 2014. “How did I come to be here in the first place? Well, we moved to Victoria and since I had been working at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), it made sense to approach Camosun. I’ve been here ever since, and love it.” As for what Ian teaches, “in the Electronics department, I’ve taught a whole range of courses from circuit analysis to programming. I currently teach the renewable energy course and a course in electric machines, which includes electric motors and generators. In Environmental Technology, I teach a microbiology course and an environmental remediation course. While the courses in each department are quite different, they’re both aimed at addressing environmental problems.”
Ian’s background prior to teaching is equally diverse. “I started off in a four-year technology apprenticeship. That led to a degree in combined engineering and a master’s degree in control system engineering. Then I had an opportunity to study biology and completed a master’s in analytical biology. Right after that I emigrated to Canada and studied environmental management at the University of Calgary. When I moved to Victoria, I completed the Restoration and Natural Systems program and postgraduate certificate in ecological restoration at the University of Victoria. I like being in school – I’m always curious about learning new things and have been very lucky to have had support to pursue all these opportunities.”
Ian has been teaching for awhile now, and I wondered what he likes best about it. “I was quite surprised to find that I love teaching because I was a bit ambivalent about getting into it originally. But once I started at SAIT, I found that I loved it. Part of what I love is working with young people, seeing them grow and develop and flourish and part of it is purely selfish because I also learn new things and grow and develop. And the teaching craft is something you are always working on – even if you teach the same thing over and over, there are always different ways to approach the material, and I like that aspect of it as well.”
I was curious what Ian’s various classes look like. “I prefer teaching in the lab or in a field setting. That’s where I feel I have the most opportunity to engage with students and to interact with equipment in the lab or with whatever we are working with in the forest or on a lake. Then in the lecture portions of the classes, I try to link to those experiences, either preparing students for them or referring back to them.” I asked if Ian could tell me more about what happens in the field classes. “We have various exercises. For example, we might go out and examine the trees in a certain area – what kinds of trees they are, how many there are. We take core samples to figure out their ages. We might try to find out how much carbon is stored in a tree. We try to discover what the age structure of the forest is and what that tells us about its history and its future. At the lake, we take water samples and go back to the lab to figure out what’s in the water sample and we measure the temperature of the lake at various depths. These are all activities designed to help us understand how the environment works – how lakes and forests function.” In the labs, students explore the electronic side of things. “We’ll work with solar panels or motors and generators to see how they function. We take measurements in the lab and see how they relate to the theory we’ve covered in class making that theory real. I try to approach things in a practical way to build theoretical knowledge layer by layer, so it makes sense to the students.”
Ian provides a variety of assessments in his classes “because I’m not sure any one of them is sufficient in itself to truly represent what a student is capable of. In class, I’ll do some conventional tests, some online testing through D2L, and quizzes that they can go away and work on. For the lab assessments, I focus on the process in the lab or the field. In other words, they don’t just produce a lab report at the end – they are exploring what happened through the lab, which is challenging to assess because people make mistakes, and I don’t want to penalize students for making mistakes because that’s a big part of learning.”
I wondered how Ian keeps his teaching fresh after all these years. “I teach in a fairly fast-moving area, so there are always new things to learn. This means that over time you gain a much deeper insight even into the foundational knowledge you’ve taught for years. I’m also fortunate because I’m still interested in what I teach. I work to keep up with the latest technology through news feeds or conferences which also keeps things fresh.” And sometimes students will bring new information into class. “I want students to contribute their knowledge to the class as well; I can’t know everything about technology myself, because it is changing so rapidly.”
I asked Ian where students in his programs come from. “We get a mix – some students come straight from high school, but many come in with fairly extensive industrial experience or degrees because they want to change career direction. Having students with a variety of background experience and education can make the class a bit of a balancing act because you don’t want the more experienced students to be bored, but at the same time, you don’t want to overwhelm newer students with excessively complex information. To satisfy both, I tend to focus on fundamentals, but will divert into more advanced topics to keep things interesting.” In the end, Ian’s goal is to set students up for successful employment. “Many of them go on to successful careers. The environmental tech students often go and work for environmental consultancies or government or NGOs while the electronic students often go on to tech employers in Victoria.”
Ian had some memories from his years of teaching to share as well. “We used to hold a five-day field camp as part of the environmental technology program, which has unfortunately been suspended for the time being. We went to the Port Renfrew area with 20 or 30 students and spent a week in the field doing various field exercises, away from phones, away from computers. It was a joy to see students in that environment, gaining new strengths, learning new things about themselves, and us as instructors also learning things about ourselves we perhaps didn’t know. The challenge of being in that environment was very rewarding and I have good memories from those experiences. But I also have a lot of memories of when students suddenly understood something, or of having conversations with students which gave me some insight into their lives.”
My final question for Ian was around what advice he might have for anyone new coming to teach at Camosun. “Be organized because that will make your life less stressful and will be appreciated by the students. Approach teaching with humility, compassion, and respect. We should do that in life anyway, but especially in the classroom. Finally, seek support if you’re not sure of something. I’ve had calls to help a new instructor, who may even be a past student, with course materials I’ve developed or just to chat about how I’ve approached a course in the past, things to watch out for, things that worked, things that didn’t. Camosun is a great place with so many experienced people willing to help.”