Greg Bokinsky: Educator of the Year TNW 2023
The Faculty of Applied Sciences seeks to educate engineers, scientists and science teachers who can assume responsible positions at the heart of society. Therefore, we strive to be a learning community that has state-of-the-art education and outstanding teachers. Nominations for Educator of the Year are made by our own students. Through our annual Educator of the Year election, we highlight excellence in education. On 27 June during the AS Education Afternoon, Paulien Herder, dean of AS, announced the Educators of the Year by AS programme and the overall winner: Dr. Greg Bokinsky. He represents the faculty in TU Delft's upcoming Educator of the Year election.
‘We need more of that guy’
The overall winner Greg Bokinsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bionanoscience, and one of the most active and most appreciated teachers in the Nanobiology (NB) programme. He teaches both in the Bachelor’s degree (NB1012 Biochemistry, jointly with Ben Tilly from the Erasmus MC, one of the very few courses that are taught by teachers from both institutions) and the Master’s degree (NB4160 Engineering of living systems, an elective for NB students but also taken by many students from outside our programme). Greg also teaches the course LM3581 Metabolic systems biology, which is formally part of the LST Master’s programme but taken by many Nanobiology students as an elective.
Moreover, Greg has been a member of the Nanobiology board of examiners for several years, acting as its chair from late 2020 until early 2023. Greg is much appreciated by our students, for all the courses he teaches. Students praise him for his interactive teaching style, his enthusiasm, clarity, and the additional (self-developed) learning materials he provides: “It’s just a really good course, also Greg was AMAZING!!! We need more of that guy”, “G. Bokinsky was engaging and presented specific case studies, that integrated the course material and made it more clear.”, “I think that the field of synthetic biology is very cool and this course opened my eyes to it”, “I enjoyed the discussions in class, it makes you really think about the course content on a deeper level” and “The students also really like the lecture notes that Greg provides them since this makes reviewing the lecture afterwards much easier.”
Greg is much more than a good teacher; he is passionate about his field and can evoke similar passion in his students; he continuously develops and improves his courses, keeping the connection with ongoing research, and especially in his Master’s courses, he uses discussions with the students as a primary learning tool. In his role as supervisor, Greg significantly contributes in training a new generation of university teachers, who will enter the job market much better prepared for a teaching position than anyone coming from a research-oriented postdoc.
Finally, in his role as chair of the board of examiners of Nanobiology (both BSc and MSc), Greg has played a key role in ensuring the quality of our programme. As such, he participated in the re- accreditation process in 2022.
