HSE’s Best Teachers of 2020 Announced

The 2020 HSE Best Teacher award recipients have been announced on the HSE University website. The final list represents the choices of HSE students, graduates, as well as the results of the Student Research Paper Competition.

The HSE Best Teachers are selected by students in a special vote conducted as part of the Teaching Quality Assessment and by graduates in the Alumni Monitoring. Best Teacher awards are also given to academic supervisors of students who won the Student Research Paper Competition.

This year, several changes were introduced to the student voting. A new category was added: in addition to core faculty courses, the award now also recognizes teachers of faculty optional courses and pool disciplines – courses that, like minors, MAGOLEGO courses, and open optional courses, are not included in the curricula of particular degree programmes. This includes, for example, minors of the Faculty of Humanities, as well as pool disciplines of the Faculty of Mathematics.

The announcement procedure has also slightly changed this year. Now only the names of teachers who hold current positions at the University are listed. Those who are included in the draft order on the teaching bonus allocation, and those who hold research, administrative, and other positions will be announced separately. The statuses of people who cooperate with HSE under a contract will be posted on the website during the academic year as soon as their contracts are signed.

According to the results published on the website (excluding those working under contracts), 478 staff members were recognized as best teachers, including 83 teachers chosen by graduates and 95 academic supervisors of the Student Research Paper Competition winners.

This year, 61 teachers were recognized in two categories at the same time, and four teachers were recognized in three categories at the same time. These are Ilya Lokshin and Irina Zangieva from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Alexandra Staruseva-Persheeva from the Faculty of Communications, Media and Design, and Armen Beklaryan from the Faculty of Business and Management (now the Graduate School of Business).

Vadim Radaev
HSE First Vice Rector

The best teachers voting is one of the key tools that allow us to recognize the teaching skills of our staff and encourage their continued development. We try to diversify the process of determining the best teachers, but the major tool is the student vote at the end of an academic year. in addition, we also consider graduates’ overall impressions of their studies, as well as distinguished academic supervising. The ten-year history of the best teacher award shows that voting proved to be a well-established tool.

This year we introduced a new category for teachers of optional courses and pool disciplines, and we conducted another indexation of the bonuses in honour of the 10th anniversary of student voting.

This year, the bonus for full-time teachers will be 40,000 roubles. The bonus for part-time teachers is set at 20,000 roubles. The excellent work of full-time teachers who have won ‘Best Teacher’ status for three years in a row will be rewarded with a bonus of 90,000 roubles (45,000 for part-time employees).

Most of all we are happy that every year we consistently have 140-150 teachers who receive the Best Teacher award three years in a row. These teachers, as well as, of course, those who win in several categories at once, are the core of our teaching staff, and it is especially pleasant to recognize them.

September 10, 2020