Making an Impact: Danielle Spence Receives the Provost's Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award
Danielle Spence received the Provost's Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award for her proven teaching contributions.
The following article was posted on the SENS TRANSECTS news website, on February 25, 2025. Click here to view original article.
We are pleased to announce that Danielle Spence was recognized with the Provost's Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award during USask Staff and Faculty Awards event on June 18th, 2024. This prestigious award recognizes her proven teaching contributions.
Danielle is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Environment and Sustainability and the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research takes a collaborative approach to understanding water quality issues in lakes and exploring ways to address these issues.
Danielle began her journey with TRANSECTS as a participant in the 2022 Pilot “Mini-TILL” and continued her involvement as a research assistant from 2022-23 and 2023-24. She established and led the “Student and Trainee Advisory Round Table” (START) to coordinate and communicate student needs to strengthen TRANSECTS offerings. In addition, she also created a BUDDY program for incoming TILL students to support and foster a sense of community among TILL students. She served on the Program Steering Committee (PSC) as the START representative. Being a member of the selection committee of TILL, she played a key role in designing and delivering interactive modules for the TILL foundational course. Additionally, she co-applied for the successful Spencer Foundation grant, co-led workshops at the TRANSECTS annual Program Institute, and led an article featuring key learnings about transdisciplinary sustainability education resulting from TRANSECTS. Her contributions to TRANSECTS are substantial and highly acknowledged.
About this Teaching Award, Danielle expressed that this award holds a special place and encourages her to
“Making a difference in sustainability is challenging and often takes many years
and incremental changes. Through teaching, I feel like I can have a more immediate
impact by shaping the way students think about the complexities of, and strategies
for, addressing problems of sustainability. It has been deeply rewarding watching my
students become more excited about science and motivated to tackle the complexities
surrounding sustainability and seeing how this shapes their future career and educational
journeys.”