The quotation comes from the American theologian and author of quotations, Tryon Edwards (1809-1894).
Glasgow School of Art
I work 2 days a week as Lecturer on the Product Design Engineering degree course at Glasgow School of Art. The course combines traditional engineering (taught at Glasgow University) and design, taught at GSA. The students' work at GSA is always in the form of design projects, usually with a strong practical and technical aspect.
I'm in charge of the first-year course, which has 35 students. I'm responsible for all aspects of the course: devising and running all of the student projects, coordinating the delivery of various skills classes (eg drawing), assessment, and so on. In 2009-10 I was jointly in charge of the third year. On top of this, I contribute occasionally to other years.
This is the continuation of a collaboration that started when I worked at at Glasgow Science Centre, when the first-year students did a project in which their task was to design and prototype hands-on science exhibits. Over the years I've done a lot of casual teaching, which has now transformed into a place on the permanent staff.
The picture on the right shows part of a model of a "giant hand" exhibit made by a group of first-year students. The fingers are operated by users pulling the black "tendons". The students envisaged that the real thing would be about 4 metres high.
Open University
For the past three years I have been an Associate Lecturer with the Open University. I am a tutor on the introductory maths courses MU123 Discovering Mathematics and MST121 Using Mathematics. This work involves helping students by phone or by e-mail, marking and giving feedback on assignments, and holding face-to-face tutorials.
I worked on a contract as a critical reviewer of MU123 while it was being created. As part of this work I also drafted some short sections of the course.
Stirling University
Between 1991 and 1998 I was Lecturer in the Psychology department at Stirling University. My main teaching role was the development and delivery of the undergraduate unit in Perception. I took the course over from another lecturer, but decided to develop the course again completely from scratch. I taught this course for 5 years until I left Stirling. After I had left (while I was doing my MSc) I was contracted by the department to teach my Perception course one final time.
I also lectured on the MSc in Neural Computing, and did various other first-year lectures, tutorials, etc. Of these, the job I enjoyed most was four first-year lectures on statistics. Unfortunately I left after delivering these lectures only once.
I was on the department's Teaching Committee.