Passionate teacher awarded for Excellence

As a young medical student, Professor Mounir Ghabriel encountered an enthusiastic lecturer, and discovered how a passionate teacher could ignite love for a subject. Fittingly, with over three decades of teaching experience, Mounir has now taken on the role of inspiring teacher. In his role as Associate Professor of Anatomy at the University of Adelaide, Mounir fosters extraordinary levels of interest and enthusiasm in his students. His transformational teaching methods recently earned him an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) prestigious Teaching Excellence Award.

The OLT Award for Teaching Excellence is the pinnacle of national teaching awards. It recognises the nation's most outstanding university teachers in their fields. It acknowledges those renowned for excellence in teaching, who have made a broad and deep contribution to the quality of learning and teaching in higher education. The most notable aspects of Mounir’s unique approach are his enthusiastic and supportive manner, and his innovative teaching methods.

Mounir employs multiple approaches to engage students’ and help them learn complex anatomy. These approaches include body-painting of anatomy to help give 3-D appreciation of what’s beneath the skin, layered colour-coded diagrams that students produce themselves, interactive 3-D models, and digital animation.

Mounir’s teaching philosophy and approach in supporting and stimulating student learning produces a long-lasting thirst for knowledge in his students. His aim is to appeal to all learning styles and to be sensitive to student’s needs. He describes his approach with the saying “there are as many learning methods as there are learners, so use multiple approaches”. His other mottos stress the importance of being enthusiastic, joyful, supportive and interactive in his teaching.

The impact of Mounir’s approach is most evident in the feedback received directly from his students. He has been described by a past student as having “a rare talent of making even the most complex and confusing topics approachable and understandable for students”. Another student who tracked Mounir down after 27 years to say thank you, has described him as “brilliantly artistic, creative and compassionate in teaching, firing us with wonder and amazement”.

Further testament to Mounir’s teaching excellence, are the numerous awards he has received in recent years. In 2006, he was awarded the Faculty of Health Science Executive Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2009, 2010 and 2011 he received the Richard Pellew prize, in recognition of Outstanding Teaching and Service to Medical Students. And in 2011, he was awarded an OLT Citation, as well the University’s top prize for teaching: the Vice-Chancellor and President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Mounir’s contributions in the field of anatomy have made a positive impact in the University and in anatomy education in the State and beyond. More importantly is the positive impact his teaching methods have made in the lives of so many of his students.