Our faculty chair for the 2025 Teaching and Learning Conference is Dr. Jeannette Byrne, Associate Professor, School of Human Kinetics and Recreation, Memorial University.

Dr. Jeannette Byrne is an associate professor in the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation at Memorial University. She teaches a variety of courses within the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation and recently she has begun teaching in nursing, delivering a course to students at the Centre for Nursing Studies, Faculty of Nursing and the three satellite sites.

As a lover of learning and a passionate educator, Dr. Byrne’s focus is on helping her students reach their full learning potential by striving to optimize the learning environment she creates in her courses. Teaching primarily lab-based courses, she works closely with her various learning facilitation teams to create learning experiences for students that both challenge them, while at the same time supporting them in their academic journey. She views herself as a partner with students in the learning process and everything she does in the classroom is guided by her belief that all students want to learn – the role of teachers is to create an environment that can help to facilitate that learning.

An overarching goal of Dr. Byrne’s teaching is that her students develop a deep understanding of and appreciation for the course material to apply their learning in situations outside the classroom. While she uses many different approaches in her teaching, at the foundation of her approach to teaching is to have students ‘think, process and do.’ Dr. Byrne received the 2018 Memorial University President's Award for Distinguished Teaching and was part of the inaugural Teaching Enhancement Through Scholarly Inquiry (TESI) program at Memorial. Her research program currently focuses on the role that assessment plays in student engagement and learning.