We are delighted that Dr Nina Dutta is the recipient of this year’s Imperial President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Nina’s commitment to promoting excellence, diversity and inclusion has driven her outstanding work in education. She has taken core values of education and social justice into the very heart of how she provides leadership, promoting an inclusive culture for students, faculty, patients and wider community.
Nina is the Lead for the Year 3 undergraduate Medicine in the Community (MICA) course, Diversity and Inclusion lead for MEdIC (Medical Education Innovation and Research Centre), Deputy Lead for Faculty Development, and Lead for the team’s Widening Access to Community Careers in Healthcare (WATCCH) programme which is open to all year-12 secondary school students from diverse and challenging backgrounds who are interested in healthcare. She also continues to work clinically as a GP in London and applies this experience to all her educational roles.
Nina’s leadership of MICA has transformed the experience for Imperial students, faculty and our wider local community, and the course receives outstanding student feedback every year. She has developed teaching materials to support community GPs with innovative tutorials and support students to learn about patients’ holistic health needs. She has also led on developing on-campus and community tutorials for her year 3 students. Nina has developed a unique suite of trans-disciplinary specialty choice options within MICA, so students can experience cutting-edge aspects of medicine including Medicine in the Media, Digital Health Futures, Health Coaching, Yoga and Mindfulness, preparing our future doctors to navigate the evolving and broad healthcare landscape.
Her students clearly value her work, and as one student comments:
“I think Dr Dutta has delivered to us some of the best teaching we’ve received at Imperial. She’s an incredibly engaging teacher and always gives us highly relevant teaching sessions. She also makes a lot of effort to build relationships with all her students, which we all notice.”
It is of no surprise that she has also been nominated by her students for this year’s Imperial College Student Union ‘Student Choice’ awards.
Nina has led development of the Community Action Project that all year 3 students undertake to identify and address a community need. Examples have included projects to increase access to healthcare for people who are homeless as well as people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities and to co-create video-based resources with members of the Arab community aimed at raising awareness within this community of mental health conditions and reducing the stigma associated with these. Through Nina’s exemplary mentorship, students have presented at conferences and published in peer-reviewed publications, winning numerous awards offered by the RJGP, The King’s Fund and Royal Society of Medicine.
As Faculty Development Deputy Lead, Nina directly influences the teaching practices of hundreds of GP tutors. She and her team have developed robust quality assurance methods to provide support and mentorship for tutors. She also applies her ability to develop robust and inclusive education by delivering regular teacher training RCGP accredited courses (TACTIC and ASTIC), contributing to our student’s positive student experience whilst they are on community placements.
Nina’s President’s Award is richly deserved and we are grateful for all her work in supporting and inspiring students, tutors and colleagues, developing innovative curricula and promoting a diverse, inclusive workforce.