Closing the old year and welcoming the New Year, the Vilnius University community chooses the best lecturers of the year. This year, Dr Radvilė Rimgailė-Voicik was elected the best lecturer of the Department of Botany and Genetics of the Institute of Biosciences, VU Life Sciences Center.
The lecturer who won students’ affection and the title says that for her this award is a pleasant and unexpected surprise that creates a Christmas mood. After receiving such an assessment, you subconsciously want to brace yourself up, challenge yourself one more time, offer new inclusive ways to get to know plants.
“I have a vision that fundamental plant sciences will be strong and competitive in Lithuania, and the discipline of botany will not only remain in the university schedules, but will also become a hobby for many. In my opinion, research aiding to accumulate empirical knowledge about plants should be financed, and strong research groups examining the fundamental issues of the functioning and physiology of plant populations should operate not only in foreign universities, but in universities of Lithuania as well,” R. Rimgailė-Voicik says.
Having taught botany at VU LSC for five years, she says she is looking for new and attractive ways to fight plant blindness.
“I always strive to create an open, authentic relationship with students. I accept this award as an appreciation of the work of different methods of teaching, accounting, implementation of field practice. I try to create valuable and interesting lecture content. I want students not only to master the mandatory material, but also to broaden their horizons, to face an extremely interesting, mysterious and still undiscovered living world,” R. Rimgailė-Voicik guesses about what her lectures might attract students’ attention to.
When asked what she, the best lecturer-2022, would wish for them and the entire community, she says, “I am an optimist and a maximalist by nature. With my own example and stories about the research interests of world botanists, I want to inspire and encourage students that they too can be and express themselves in this world in the most diverse ways. Moreover, if they see themselves on the path of a researcher, it is possible, too. In the coming year 2023, I would like to wish the entire community of Vilnius University to create and maintain a relationship with the environment around us and to notice the plants in it”.
Last year the VU LSC’s best lecturer award went to Microbiology Study Programme lecturer Assoc. Prof. Dr Renata Gudiukaitė.