Excellent Teaching Assistant Award 2022-23

Miss Yee Man Even LEUNG graduated from the School of Biological Sciences at HKU, majoring in Ecology & Biodiversity. She continued at HKU for her PhD research on endangered, tropical timber trade and tree conservation. She identifies herself as a conservation biologist but also a very dedicated environmental educator. She sees environmental education as one of the most effective ways to tackle environmental issues, as it teaches and inspires students to understand, love and care for nature.

Outside of her PhD, Even spends her free time leading ecotours for the public, secondary school students and young children, where she learns to adapt her teaching style and materials to fit a wide range of audiences best. Within her PhD programme, she demonstrates undergraduate courses at the School for field and lab sessions. She also supervises summer internships, final-year projects and master students. She believes that empathy is key to enjoyable and successful teaching and learning. She emphasises using beginner-friendly materials in the earlier stages of a course to spark curiosity and motivate self-learning. In the later stages of the course, where the course content is more challenging, she advocates for open channels of feedback and support for two-way communication between the teaching team and the students to cater for specific learning needs.