Wageeh Boles is a full Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics, Faculty of Engineering, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Professor Boles worked as an Assistant Professor at Penn State University, USA, prior to joining QUT where he held the positions of Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor. From 1999 to 2004, Wageeh held the position of Assistant Dean (Teaching and Learning), at the former Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, QUT.
Wageeh has been successful in obtaining numerous competitive research and teaching development grants and has more than 200 publications as journal and conference papers, book chapters, theses, and learning and teaching software packages (some of these publications are accessible from this link). He conducted pioneering research for developing new image processing techniques and adopting them to various applications such as biometric human identification using iris and palm images, object recognition and his work received international recognition.
Professor Boles has also published widely in the areas of technology and education, work integrated learning, curriculum design, and the study and utilisation of learners’ cognitive styles in the design and implementation of computer-based learning solutions. In 2007, he was elected National President of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, AaeE.
Professor Boles has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching and leadership. While working at the University of Pittsburgh, Wageeh was awarded two Outstanding Teaching Assistant Medals. At QUT, he won the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, FBEE, teaching excellence award and the University’s Outstanding Academic Contribution Award in Teaching and Leadership in 1999. In 2004, he won the National Engineers Australia and the AaeE Award for Excellence in Teaching and Leadership. He also won the Vice Chancellor’s Performance Award in 2007. In December 2008, Wageeh won the FBEE Dean’s excellence award for outstanding contributions to student learning.
Professor Boles was the recipient of a 2007 Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Associate Fellowship. In May 2011, Wageeh was privileged to receive one of only 5 National Teaching Fellowships that are awarded to high-profile leaders from universities across Australia. More details about this fellowship and the resources it produced can be found here. Wageeh was nominated for the inaugural David Gardiner QUT Teacher of the Year Award in 2014. Prof Boles was awarded the national Distinguished Member Award, from the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, in 2015. At the time, this honour was received only by one other academic in Australia.
Wageeh was recognised as a Principal Fellow of the United Kingdom Higher Education Academy in 2016. In 2019, he was appointed as an Accredited Mentor, at the QUT Academy for Learning and Teaching. Professor Boles was nominated for a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence for demonstrating leadership excellence in 2020, and again in 2022 for demonstrating excellence in learning and teaching leadership. Professor Boles received the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics Service Award in 2021, Learning and Teaching Innovation Award in 2022, and the Sustained Learning and Teaching Quality Award in 2023.
Mrs Hilary Beck
Hilary Beck was a Project Officer within the former School Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane. She holds a Masters in Education (Adult and Workplace Learning), and has been a key member of several projects including the CDIO Project, Work Integrated Learning, and ALTC and OLT Teaching and Learning projects.
Hilary has contributed to several conference papers on these topics. Her interests are in engineering education, particularly high school outreach and mentoring programs.
Dr Elizabeth McDonald
Dr Elizabeth McDonald joined the team as Program Evaluator in July 2012. She followed up a teaching career with policy and program work in a number of organisations including Parramatta Catholic Education Office, the Department of Education Science and Training (DEST) and the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. At DEST, she ran the secretariat for a national review of nursing education and then took a key role in the establishment of the Carrick Institute, which was to become the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) where she took a leadership position in 2006. Among her responsibilities in the latter part of the time she worked at the ALTC was the Programs and Networks portfolio, which included management of the grants and fellowship programs. She has been doing consultancy work including project evaluation and some part-time work with universities since she finished at the ALTC in late 2009.
Dr Bhuva Narayan
Bhuva Narayan was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the former School of Information Systems, Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Bhuva holds a PhD in Information Technology from QUT and a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. She has worked as a researcher on several ALTC and OLT projects since 2010.
Bhuva’s research interests relate to the cognitive and behavioural aspects of human learning and human interaction with information, and her Learning & Teaching interests are in the areas of research-teaching nexus and online pedagogy.
Dr Deborah Southwell
Dr Deborah Southwell worked as the Program Evaluator from July 2011 to January 2012. Deborah was the Director, Learning and Teaching Development at QUT. She has led a number of national projects – one on Effective strategies for the dissemination of project outcomes and a leadership project: ‘Caught between a rock and several hard places’: Cultivating the roles of the Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning).