SACKVILLE, NB – Associate psychology professor and department head Dr. Lisa Dawn Hamilton is the 2022 recipient of the Herbert and Leota Tucker Teaching Award at Mount Allison University. The award is the highest teaching honour at the University.
 
Hamilton has taught at Mount Allison since 2010 with a focus on biological psychology, gender, and sexuality. Her research areas include behavioral neuroscience, social/personality psychology, with a focus on human sexuality and stress; secondary interests in the neural and social correlates of monogamy and nonmonogamy and the social factors involved in sexual health behaviors. She also runs the MASH (Mount Allison Sexual Health) research lab on campus.
 
“There are so many amazing people at Mount Allison, I’m honoured and humbled to be recognized among them with the Tucker Teaching Award,” says Hamilton. “I love teaching and connecting with students and community members in my work.” 
 
Hamilton works to make her teaching and subject matter accessible to her students in several ways, including a seminar class she first developed in 2020 entitled Stress, Burnout, and Resilience. The members of the class researched and produced a podcast series This is Fine: A Podcast About Stress, Burnout, and Resilience. The assignment allowed students to take their learning to another level, preparing it in a new format for a wider audience.
 
“Dr. Hamilton’s innovative teaching and research programs are examples of the kinds of experiences we aim to give students at Mount Allison,” says Jeff Hennessy, the University’s Provost and Vice-President, Academic and Research. “I wish to congratulate and thank her for her exceptional work.”
 
Having taught both online and in-person over the course of the pandemic, Hamilton says maintaining a sense of community for classes is important to her.
 
“Giving students the opportunity to make connections as a class makes people more comfortable to participate and share their thoughts in class, whether it’s online or in-person,” she says. 
 
Hamilton’s teaching and research programs around sexual health and education extend well beyond Mount Allison’s labs and classrooms. In 2019 she established SexEdEast, offering educational programming and workshops to the community — parents, educators, and healthcare and community workers — around sex education and sexual health. Hamilton is also the creator of the podcast — Do We Know Things, examining themes in sexual health and education (mature listeners only). 
 
This spring, Hamilton, along with 16 students from Mount Allison, will travel to the Netherlands in a collaboration with Utrecht University. The course will focus on sex education from a cross-cultural lens. The program is funded by the Global Skills Opportunity Program through Employment and Social Development Canada.
 
Along with her teaching and research programs, Hamilton is also a member of the University’s Senate and, in 2020, served as co-chair of Mount Allison’s Working Group around Sexual Violence Response, Education, and Prevention. She continues to serve on the University’s advisory committee and collaborate with staff and departments across campus to offer her expertise in the areas of sexual education and health.

The Herbert and Leota Tucker Teaching Award is Mount Allison’s highest recognition of teaching excellence and Mount Allison's only university-wide teaching award. Established by Edmund, Harold and William Tucker in memory of their parents, it is intended to encourage excellence in teaching at Mount Allison University by acknowledging those who exemplify this excellence.