"LundaEkonomerna and the Education Committee proudly present Pontus Hansson, from the Economics Department, as the Teacher of the Year 2024. Pontus has been praised by LUSEM's students for his engaging pedagogics during lectures, making large courses comprehensible and for making students trust that he will always do what is best for them. Great work Pontus and congratulations!", reads the official motivation from Lundaekonomerna.
Tova Mark, president of Lundaekonomerna explains that they ask the students at LUSEM if they want to nominate a teacher of the year.
Besides the ammount of nominations relative to the size of the class, they take into account how well written the motivation is. Why this person, and why should they be awarded the prize?
We find Pontus in his office deeply entrenched in his work and ask him the classic sports cliché question about how he feels now that he won a prize.
He looks up, a bit sternly at first, then he smiles and says:
“How I feel? Not so different, but of course I am very happy about the award. I really like teaching and seeing that I can contribute to the development and growth of talented young people is very rewarding. It’s something I enjoy a lot. Also, the topic of macroeconomics is fun in itself, so I like talking about it.”
There were many subjects vying for his attention when he started studying, but wanting to understand the economic forces behind how our society works and the combination he found in economics of mathematical and quantitative methods being applied to the social sciences were some of the main factors drawing him in. Now he in turn draws in a new generation of economics students and doing an awesome job at it.
Congratulations Pontus!