Dr Poh Wah Hillock

I am a teaching focused academic in the School of Mathematics and Physics (SMP). I obtained my PhD in Pure Mathematics from the University of Adelaide in 1996. My thesis was in the area of Convex Sets with Lattice Point Constraints. After my PhD, I worked as a mathematics lecturer at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, for a period of 3 years.

I have extensive teaching and administrative experience at the secondary-tertiary interface. Prior to my PhD, I taught senior high school mathematics in Singapore. As head of the mathematics department, I led a team of 20 teachers and oversaw the delivery of the senior high school mathematics curriculum for over 2000 students. In my current role as lecturer and coordinator of large first year mathematics courses, 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. To date, more than 600 students have attended the SLT. These students have consistently outperformed the general cohort in pass rates and quality of results. My SLT work has been recognised with two UQ teaching excellence awards and one national teaching award. Another significant initiative which I have led is the MATH1051 (Calculus and Linear Algebra I) 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.