On March 27th, the ESSEC Foundation held its annual ceremony at the Institut Catholique de Paris, bringing together the ESSEC community to promote academic excellence, entrepreneurship and equal opportunities. The event celebrated the winners of the Pedagogical Excellence Award, recognizing outstanding contributions to teaching at ESSEC.

ESSEC Foundation

The mission of the ESSEC Foundation is to support the development of ESSEC in the short and long term, through the funding of social scholarships, the transformation of the Cergy campus, and support for academic excellence.

Honoring Pedagogical Excellence

This year, three distinguished educators were honored with the 2024 Teaching Awards for their remarkable contributions to pedagogical excellence. They shared with us what receiving the award means for them.

I am delighted to receive the 2024 Professor Teaching Award from ESSEC Foundation.
Thank you to everyone who contributes to the ESSEC Foundation. I wish to share this award with my fellow ESSEC professors, lecturers and staff who are dedicated to our mission of education.
It encourages me and them to contribute to ESSEC’s mission, so that students are eager to prepare themselves to take on responsibilities according to ESSEC’s values.

According to Nelson Mandela, “education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world”. It involves:

1. Raising awareness of a challenge to be met by setting an objective to stimulate the desire to learn and work
2. Listening and sharing to open up and challenge oneself, in order to progress and learn from each other
3. Working to take action, make the most of one’s talents, take on responsibilities in line with ESSEC’s values, for your own good and the good of all.

Find out more about Professor Francis Declerck

Receiving this award for the second time (2020 and 2023) is a humble validation of my commitment to teaching excellence, which dates back to my time at ESSEC since 2010, when I joined for language and civilization courses. The various exchanges with students inspired me to develop my course “Diversity of the Arab World and Managerial Cultures” and a Masterclass as part of ESSEC’s ACT program, reinforcing the centrality of the human element in education. It reinforces my belief in the transformative power of education beyond language or geopolitics, by underlining the importance of fostering openness to the world, to cultures, to differences and to reasoning. This recognition reaffirms my commitment to inspiring and empowering students to reach their full potential by showing them the richness that lies within each of them, instilling in them a lifelong love of learning, and giving them the means to pursue their dreams and make meaningful contributions to society.

Find out more about Professor Haïfa Hubert

Receiving this award and recognition took me by complete surprise. First, I was not aware of its existence and secondly, I was relatively new to the classroom so I wasn’t sure how effective my teaching was. I was an adjunct lecturer before I joined the faculty full-time and most of my experience was online during Covid. Those circumstances made it  challenging to know if I was really getting through to students. Having a normal teaching load and a faster cadence of interaction and feedback helped me adjust my classes based on constructive feedback. I’m always fine-tuning my classes and methodology so I still feel like I haven’t taught the same course twice yet. 

It was quite motivating to be recognized in such a way and I hope I can continue to improve the classroom experience so that students can realize their true potential.

Find out more about Professor Rick Marchese