SMU Teaching Excellence Hall of Fame
The Hall of Fame, established in 2024, honours faculty members who have distinguished themselves by achieving five SMU Teaching Excellence Awards. Recipients are celebrated as being in a league of their own, and stand as enduring sources of inspiration for their peers within the SMU teaching community. Hall of Fame recipients can look forward to attaining the Distinguished Educator Award.
2024
Teaching Excellence in Postgraduate Professional Programmes: 2024 (Hall of Fame), 2020
Excellent Teacher Award: 2017 (Honour Roll 2017 till 2021 for UG awards), 2014
Innovative Teacher Award: 2022, 2015
Professor Seow Poh Sun is an educator dedicated to the integration of student-centred teaching, real-world relevance, and technology within the classroom. Over his 14 years at SMU, he has taught a range of courses including Financial and Management Accounting, Accounting Information Systems, Financial Accounting, Financial Accounting for Service Sector Analytics, Financial Accounting for Financial Services. Within SMU, Poh Sun has earned six SMU Teaching Excellence Awards across both undergraduate and postgraduate categories, including a place on the SMU Teaching Excellence Honour Roll from 2017 to 2021. Beyond SMU, his commitment to teaching excellence has garnered him prestigious teaching accolades from institutions across Asia, Europe, and North America. Most notably, in 2023, Poh Sun became the first academic in Singapore to receive the Outstanding Accounting Educator Award from the American Accounting Association, further affirming his significant contributions to SMU’s international standing.
Poh Sun’s passion for learning experiences that are engaging, personalised and technology-enabled is evident in the innovative, award-winning teaching tools co-developed with colleagues, such as the “Red Flags Accounting Fraud" and “SMU Challenge” mobile-gaming apps, as well as the “Resource-Event-Agent (REA) Data Model online e-learning tutorial. These resources have also been generously shared with and widely adopted by both regional and global institutes of higher education, benefitting students and instructors across the world, and bearing testament to his global impact on accounting education.
Beyond teaching, Poh Sun is actively engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning, having received two Ministry of Education Tertiary Education Research Fund grants in 2015 and 2019, and regularly publishes in peer-reviewed journals in accounting and business education. Not surprisingly, he is frequently invited to contribute his pedagogical services on curriculum within SMU, as well as at the national and international level. Given his reputation for sustained teaching excellence, it is not surprising that Poh Sun is often invited to share his insights as a speaker or panellist at both local and international educational conferences.
Poh Sun is truly an inspiring legend for peers and students alike. In him, the SMU community finds a model of excellence for igniting and sustaining a passion for lifelong learning.
2024
SMU-X Excellent Teacher Award: 2021
Excellent Teacher Award: 2016 (Honour Roll 2016 till 2020 for UG awards), 2013
Innovative Teacher Award: 2011
Special Award for Innovation: 2008
Principal Lecturer of Statistics Rosie Ching has earned numerous accolades throughout her 18-year career at SMU, demonstrating excellence in teaching, innovation, and mentorship. In addition to her five SMU Teaching Excellence Awards, she has won several international honours, such as the Wharton-QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) Stars Reimagine Education Awards.
Ms Ching teaches a range of courses across undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive development programmes, focusing primarily on statistics and research techniques. In her Introductory Statistics undergraduate SMU-X course, students apply statistical methods to raise public awareness about important social issues. Some partner organisations students have worked with include the Samaritans of Singapore, Parkway Cancer Centre, Caregivers Alliance Limited, Alzheimer's Disease Association, Guide Dogs Singapore, and the World Toilet Organisation. The course is well-known for its interactive and engaging nature, concluding each term with a stage show finale by students that draws large audiences, sometimes including Ministers as guests of honour.
Ms Ching’s dedication to student success, combined with hands-on learning, contribute to the effectiveness of her teaching approaches. Students value her passion and efforts, appreciating the real-life examples, games, experiments, and creative props she uses to illustrate statistical concepts, making the subject relatable and understandable. Students have also commented that the course enhances their perseverance, communication, problem-solving, and teamwork skills. Despite the course’s demands, Ms Ching leaves a lasting impact, making statistics enjoyable and memorable even for those initially uninterested in the subject. Her commitment extends beyond the classroom, as she often offers personal support and care to her students during challenging times.
She has also contributed to the scholarship of teaching and learning through the creation of innovative games, presentations at faculty development events, and the publication of conference papers. Additionally, her mentorship has led to student victories in statistical competitions.