Senior Lecturer, Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Waikato

"I’m as much a learner as my students."

Alison believes that “the development of enhanced scientific literacy… is a critical dimension of modern-day citizenship”. Her exemplary and innovative teaching of biology is designed to help students understand the process of science. Learning in her classes is interactive, challenging and fun. A student comments: “Never before have I had the opportunity to learn from someone with such infectious enthusiasm… I have been inspired to lecture later in my career … to provide students like myself with the same contagious passion Alison has provided me.”

Her innovative websites are an important tool, while 700 secondary school students a year come to know Alison as the “skull lady” as the result of her seminars on human evolution in the Waikato Experience of Biology days which she initiated eleven years ago. Alison also pioneered café scientifique locally to bring scientists and the general public together. Her warm and engaging style and her clarity of presentation are widely appreciated. A former student and now colleague notes that “time and again students have asked me which papers [Alison] teaches at second year so that they can …. continue having her as a lecturer”.