When Dr. Melissa Hills started teaching at MacEwan nearly two decades ago, then-colleague Dr. Rick Lewis welcomed her with a clipping of ivy. The plant – still thriving in her home – was the first personal touch she added to her office space. Today, her bright office is bursting with many more green, living things – and students who walk into it receive just as warm a welcome as she did on her own arrival.

“Whenever students come to office hours, it’s a time to connect personally with someone that you otherwise only see in a large classroom full of people,” says the professor of biological sciences and 2025 Teaching Leadership Award recipient. 

Dr. Hills works in as much time with individual students as she can in those classrooms, especially in her 300-level biotechnology and society course which deals with the ethics and legal perspectives on current biotechnology applications making headlines in the media.

“We get a chance to talk about things like ableism that aren’t typically covered in a standard molecular biology and genetics courses,” she explains. “Students do a lot of writing in that course, and there’s a lot of one-on-one interaction and feedback so they can revise and improve during the term.”

But the relationships developed in her office hours go deeper than coursework feedback. When students arrive feeling overwhelmed or upset, Dr. Hills has a few methods to help to calm them – listening to what they’re dealing with in their personal lives, finding practice work they might learn from or explaining concepts in different ways to find what clicks. The chats are a chance for her to learn, too.

“If students have a few extra minutes, I take that opportunity to get some feedback on my course design, especially if I’ve tried a new assessment or strategy,” says Dr. Hills.

Those conversations grow in her space, where most of the seemingly decorative, eclectic items actually relate back to her colleagues and her work – and even help her teach it.

Welcome to my office

When considering the things she loves in her space, Dr. Hills immediately points out a preserved and mounted weevil. Jill Anderson, a Biological Sciences lab technician at MacEwan, created the work and posted it to her Instagram account. When Dr. Hills saw the post, she knew she had to have it.

“I have three of her little insects, but the weevil on the tricycle is my favourite. I just love it. It’s fun, it’s aligned with biology and somebody in my department made it,” she says. “I think a lot of biologists have quirky little hobbies that are somehow still connected to biology.” 

Despite not being a palaeontologist, Dr. Hills says a Therizinosaurus model has a special place in her office. It was gifted to her by now-retired colleague Gordon Youzwyshyn, who researched data-sourced palaeontology and had it in his own office while teaching at MacEwan.

“It’s my favourite dinosaur,” says Dr. Hills. “They’re actually herbivores, but they have these super long claws they used to reach branches and bring them down to eat.”

It’s a special reminder of the connection she has with her colleagues, and how what might appear to be random items fill her space with sentimentality and memories.

“These models of meiosis, which is the process by which cells divide to form the gametes, like egg and sperm, were models the lab used for students, but were cycled out,” explains Dr. Hills. 

She decided to keep them as functionally decorative items – not only to add to the atmosphere of the room, but to illustrate concepts when students come to her office hours.

“This is a coyote skull that Dana Sanderson, a biology technician, gave to me,” says Dr. Hills. “We have many coyote skulls – people will bring in dead animals and donate them to our labs for learning, so we have some extras. Whenever dogs come into my office, they’re always drawn over here, checking out the skull.”

The skull is not only another gift from a co-worker, but it’s a reminder that colleagues within the department can sometimes help each other out in unexpected ways. When her neighbour told her about a dead duck on their street, Dr. Hills set out with a shovel, collected the mallard and kept it in her freezer until she could bring it in. It’s now being used as a teaching specimen in the lab.

What does receiving this award mean to you?

“Just being nominated is such an honour, especially when students show the initiative – they have so much going on in their lives, so it’s a lot for them to take time and think about recognizing their professor,” says Dr. Hills. “I think having students and colleagues who think that you deserve it and recognize the contributions that you're making means more than the award itself.”