Congratulations to Dr Rachel Quarrell, who has been awarded one of the 2025 MPLS Teaching Awards. Rachel is the Chemistry, Engineering and Materials Science (CEMS) Course and Chemistry Lead for Oxford’s Astrophoria Foundation Year programme.
Rachel’s award highlights her dedication to setting up and running the CEMS Foundation Year course, leading and innovating on course development. The nomination drew attention to her work finding and mentoring tutors, liaising carefully with departments, and ensuring that the teaching and assessment was high-quality, fair, appropriate for the course, and academically rigorous.
Rachel’s colleagues were struck by her insight into the transition between school and university learning, her great ability to analyse how individual students were learning and how to help them develop themselves further, and her commitment to getting things right. The nomination highlighted her key role in the Chemistry admissions process and described her as the department’s expert on international qualifications, where her work was greatly valued and respected by colleagues.
The nomination also noted Rachel as an excellent college tutor at several colleges for many years. Specifically, the nomination highlighted how she had successfully applied innovative approaches from the Astrophoria Foundation Year (such as feedback from student to tutor) to her college teaching with great success.
You can read more about Rachel, and this year's other awardees, here.