Birgit impressed the jury with outstanding qualities as a teacher. Birgit consistently empowers students by offering them autonomy while also ensuring their needs are met. She is highly reliable, fosters a warm and welcoming environment for both students and colleagues, and approaches her work with a positive energy, which creates an engaging and conscientious learning atmosphere. Furthermore, she successfully took over a course that was previously rated very well among students, further demonstrating her exceptional abilities as a teacher.

Ilja is an experienced and dedicated teacher in multiple statistics courses, which students often find challenging. With his creative approach, Ilja's lectures are both fun and entertaining, captivating students' attention. His teaching style effortlessly transforms difficult subjects into interesting topics so students can understand them easily, fostering an enthusiastic learning environment. Ilja's numerous nominations over the years show his outstanding contribution to teaching, and he is a deserving candidate for winning this award.

Sjoerd is a compassionate teacher who generously shares his knowledge to students and colleagues. Students praise his way of teaching and point out his enthusiasm, involvement, and connection. In the course he teaches he made a change based on the flipped classroom, which made significant improvements on the course. The talent prize suits him really well. The jury expects to hear more about his academic career in the coming years.

Jacek is an experienced and dedicated teacher in Psychometrics and statistics classes, which students may find to be more challenging, are taught by Jacek, an experienced and dedicated professor. However, he has the ability to make complex subjects simple and inspire an interest in statistics in students. Teaching meta-analyses is his real passion. At the VU, he delivered an invited lecture on this subject to Ukrainian refugees. He also actively assisted in planning their trip to Amsterdam. Jacek is a highly understanding, accessible, and patient teacher. He never fails to accommodate his pupils. He deserves praise for his hard work and dedication.

Beata is a very creative and solution-oriented person. You can also see this in her role as a teacher and colleague: she is involved, understands what students need and can explain complex matters well. She always knows how to captivate and enthuse students. In addition, she also has an eye for the well-being of the students: she has set up a social zoom hour directly after her work groups, which was very popular. And she is even helping to start a buddy system for first-year students.

Although Erik is a very experienced teacher, he never settles down. On the contrary, he is still very flexible and creative in his teaching, adopting the newest techniques such as a live chat. Erik was equally able to put his well-known passion into his online lectures as in physical lectures at the VU. He is committed to make sure that every student understands the content thoroughly. As a student stated “His dedication and positive attitude towards the subject made studying feel like a fun activity.”

Siri is innovative, creative and an extraordinary example of how to combine a scientific career with education, she really goes the extra mile. She is loved by students and teachers. Students are impressed by how quickly she answers her emails and how much she helps them. The jury called her Midas; “everything she touches turns in to gold”. 

Marleen is someone who generously shares her knowledge with students and colleagues. Students praise her way of teaching. She is approachable, involved, she ensures that everyone can follow her lecture and takes away the fear students have for statistics. She was an early example for online education among other teachers. Recently she used her creativity to teach online by using videos, short knowledge clips, and Q&A sessions Besides this all, she is developing an educational curriculum for writing education and is converting subject matter from SPSS to R. 

João impressed the jury with his embodiment of the teacher who does more than teach about his academic domain. This can be attributed to his personal and vulnerable approachability by which he acts as a role model and inspiration for his students. He is known by students and staff as a spontaneous, enthusiastic and friendly teacher/coworker and as who seeks to connect (with) other people outside his domain.

John impressed the jury with his innovative way of teaching and his approachability. Students remark him as pleasant, approachable and engaging with his method of teaching. An example being that he gave students the assignment to teach themselves something like juggling and film it to show and discuss during class. John shows that being creative and innovative is not exclusive to younger talents, and (ways of) teaching keeps evolving and improving.