Associate Professor Poh Wah Hillock
Teaching and learning
Dr Hillock is an award winning teacher who teaches 1st year mathematics
Researcher biography
I obtained my PhD in Pure Mathematics from the University of Adelaide in the area of Convex Sets with Lattice Point Constraints. Following my PhD, I was a mathematics lecturer at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In 2012, I joined UQ as a teaching focused academic in the School of Mathematics and Physics.
I have extensive teaching and administrative experience at the secondary-tertiary interface. Prior to my PhD, I taught senior high school mathematics in Singapore, where, as head of the mathematics department, I oversaw the delivery of the senior high school mathematics curriculum for over 2000 students. In my current role as Director of First Year Mathematics, I have led and implemented course improvements. These include the development of a comprehensive range of graded learning resources for key first year mathematics courses and specific initiatives to address the secondary-tertiary mathematics transition. One such initiative that has been especially rewarding is the Support Learning Tutorial (SLT), an intervention program that I designed and implemented to support at-risk first year students. SLT students have consistently outperformed the general cohort in pass rates and quality of results. Another significant initiative which I led is the MATH1051 (Calculus and Linear Algebra I) UQ2U Blended Learning Project. This project introduced changes to the delivery of MATH1051 in 2019, through the integration of online and high-value on-campus activities. A key innovation is the creation of a complete set of videos for MATH1051 and the implementation of collaborative workshops. The success of the MATH1051 project has led to the subsequent redesign of several large first year mathematics courses.
The impact of my teaching and research has been recognised through eight teaching awards (five UQ and three national awards). I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Fellowship (SFHEA) and 2022 Australian University Teacher of the Year.
Awards and Fellowships
- Australian Awards for University Teaching, Australian University Teacher of the Year, 2022
- Australian Awards for University Teaching, Award for Teaching Excellence, 2022
- UQ Faculty of Science Sustained Teaching Excellence Award, 2021
- UQ Award for Teaching Excellence, 2021
- Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), 2020
- UQ Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology Special Teaching Excellence Award, 2018
- Australian Awards for University Teaching Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, 2017
- UQ Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning, 2016
- UQ Faculty of Science Award for Teaching Excellence, 2014