Topic: What Nobody Tells You About Teaching Contests

Speaker: Dr. Chally LIM, Associate Professor, FHSS

Abstract:

You’re asked to submit a course syllabus and lesson plan, but you don’t know what to include. You’re told to record a classroom teaching, but you haven’t a clue what to capture. Join me as I share the things I wish someone had told me before I entered teaching contests.

About the Speaker:

Chally Lim is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her teaching achievements include Provincial First-Class Curriculum, Second Prize in the Guangdong Higher Institutions Excellent Teaching Case Study, the BNBU President’s Award for Teaching, First Prize in the BNBU Teaching Contest.

Topic: From Tasting to Thinking: Teaching Food Appreciation as an Integrative Liberal-Education Course — An Award-Winning Sharing from the Young University Teachers’ Teaching Competition

Speaker: Dr. Wenmeng HE, Associate Professor, FST

Abstract: 

Food Appreciation is a liberal-education elective open to diverse disciplines. Its challenge is typical: the subject is engaging but can remain at sensory description, lacking academic depth and structured progression. This sharing presents an award-winning redesign for the Young University Teachers’ Teaching Competition. The course makes three shifts: from tasting to interpreting, from content coverage to competence progression, and from food knowledge to food literacy. A dual-module architecture supports this. The foundation module builds scientific concepts—food composition, quality, nutrition, and sensory evaluation—so students ground judgments in evidence. The extension module crosses disciplines, linking food to culture, business, technology, and supply chains, turning diverse backgrounds into a pedagogical asset. Experiential tasting activities generate data for analytical writing, comparative argumentation, and peer critique; online materials free class time for guided practice and dialogue. Assessment rewards using sensory and scientific evidence to construct defensible judgments. Values education is embedded, not appended: food safety responsibility, cultural confidence, and scientific integrity emerge from disciplinary inquiry. The course was voted a student “Star Course,” recognized in provincial teaching-quality projects, and awarded in the competition. Its transferable principle: engagement without rigor is entertainment; rigor without engagement is inaccessible; a competition-ready course holds both together.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Wenmeng He is an Associate Professor of Food Science and Engineering at Beijing Normal University–Hong Kong Baptist University (BNBU), Associate Researcher at the HKBU–BNBU Joint Research Institute. She earned her PhD in Food and Nutritional Sciences from the School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and her MSc from Jiangnan University. She has served as a Teaching Assistant, Part-time Research Assistant, and Visiting Scholar at the School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and as a Visiting Research Scholar at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Dr. He is a Chinese Registered Dietitian and a member of the Chinese Nutrition Society and the Hong Kong Nutrition Association. She has published 39 SCI-indexed papers, two English-language book chapters, and six patents. She has served as Principal Investigator of 10 provincial-level and collaborative research projects and has participated in six national and provincial/ministerial-level projects. She is an Early Career Editorial Board Member for Journal of Future Food, Food and Health, Sensory Neuroscience, Food Materials Research, and Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology, and a reviewer for 19 academic journals, including Food Chemistry, Food Chemistry-X, Food Research International, Journal of Food Science, and Journal of Food Science and Technology.