Dr. Amanda Nelund says that when she was an undergraduate student, she went to her professors’ office hours a grand total of two times.

“I was a first-generation university student, so it took my entire degree to learn unspoken norms – including office hours,” says the associate professor in the Department of Sociology who received a 2025 Distinguished Teaching Award. “The first time I went, I ended up in tears, but the second time I went to a prof’s office hours, it changed my life and led me directly to this career.”   

Dr. Nelund says that while she can’t promise that she’ll change her students’ lives, there are lots of great reasons to stop by – whether it’s spending two minutes answering a question that would have required several emails to sort through or taking the time to chat through their academic and professional goals. 

Welcome to my shared office

While she’s on sabbatical during the 2025/26 academic year, Dr. Nelund is sharing an office space and most of her belongings are packed away in boxes. “Typically, my office looks like a stereotypical professor works there,” she laughs. “There are articles everywhere, stacks of books and random notes. It’s a bit of a hot mess, to be honest.” 

Tucked into what Dr. Nelund calls a “mess” are a few stand-out items. Here are a few she chose to share.

Thank-you cards line Dr. Nelund’s bookcase.

“Not only did I rarely talk to my profs as an undergrad, I would never have thought to give them a thank-you card,” she says. 

Tucked among the cards is a single scrap of paper with a handwritten message torn from the last page of a student’s final exam. The little messages, says Dr. Nelund, are a nice reminder of what it means to teach. 

“For me, teaching sociology is about giving students the conceptual tools to understand the expertise they already have,” she says. “I’m not here to tell students what it’s like to experience a lot of things we talk about in class, because many of them have already experienced them. I’m here to help share tools to help students – who are typically going to work in criminal justice one day – make sense of those experiences, to take a broader view of them and to see how they are situated in what we know from the research.”

A tote from a conference Dr. Nelund attended years ago.

“All of my research and most of my teaching is typically on violence – sexual violence, in particular,” she says. “I focus on the terrible things we do to each other in our institutions, our social structures and interpersonally. The statement on that bag reminds me that we also have to talk about what we need for a healthy society. That the research we do and the scholarship we engage in is ultimately about how we should be in the world together. I really love that idea.”

Artwork that Dr. Nelund’s daughter drew when she was two years old. 

This framed artwork from her daughter has been in her office for so long and blended into the background so much that Dr. Nelund hadn’t really thought about it until a student mentioned it last term. 

“The student came in, sat down, looked at the drawing and said it made her feel a little bit more at ease,” says the prof. “It felt like I was bringing my complete self into this space, and that she could too.”

What does it mean to have your students and colleagues nominate you for a teaching award? 

“One of my favourite things to do is to hype up my tremendous colleagues and the brilliant, strong, academically well-rounded students I get to work with,” says Dr. Nelund. “Seeing these excellent people do the same thing for me is invigorating and makes me look forward to my next decade of teaching.”