Drama professor Dr. Aaron Taylor is advancing student success by developing resilience, executive functioning and essential skills like time management and communication in new and first-year students. His efforts have led to him being named the University of Lethbridge’s 2025 Board of Governors Teaching Chair.
Known for his dynamic teaching style and commitment to critical dialogue, Taylor builds inclusive, collaborative learning environments that help students find success from the beginning of their academic journey.
The Board of Governors Teaching Chair recognizes teaching excellence and the scholarship of teaching and learning at ULethbridge. Taylor will be recognized at Spring 2025 Convocation, Ceremony III, on, May 30, 2025, at 9 a.m. in the Centre for Sport and Wellness gymnasium.
Dr. Aaron Taylor
Taking a nuanced approach to student growth and resiliency, Department of Drama Professor Dr. Aaron Taylor deeply understands the challenges faced by students and the need to support them beyond classroom learning. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and critically rigorous pedagogy, Taylor is ensuring students are prepared to excel in post-secondary environments and in their later careers from the moment they step foot on campus.
Taylor is a cinema and media studies scholar who focuses on screen acting, cognitive film theory and transmedia relations between film and comics. Since joining the University of Lethbridge in 2007, Taylor has built a reputable pedagogy that distinguishes him as a standout professor and mentor. He received a Teaching Fellowship in 2017 and was recognized as a Tier 2 Board of Governors Research Chair in 2019, his teaching methods focused on creating an environment of critical conversation, openness and dialogue.
Lauded by students and peers for his dynamic and engaging teaching style, Taylor strives to facilitate learning through open environments and conversations where students feel comfortable sharing ideas and making thoughtful and well-reasoned judgments in their work. Taylor meticulously designs his courses to encourage collaboration and move students from routine memorization to truly understanding and transforming what they learn.
With a long history of making significant and meaningful contributions to the culture of teaching excellence, Taylor’s ability to appeal to a diverse range of students creates safe, positive and enjoyable learning experiences for many.
Taylor often serves as students’ first instructor in post-secondary education, frequently teaching large introductory courses. Through this role, he has gained insight into the challenges new students face and has identified a need to build resilience and executive function skills. In a post-secondary setting, resilience refers to the ability to adapt to and overcome academic and social setbacks.
Recognizing a lack of essential skills like time management, self-confidence and communication in new and first-year university students, Taylor aims to systematically cultivate resilience in first-year students to help them succeed and flourish. Inspired by the StartSmart program at ULethbridge, which identifies opportunities for growth and institutional assistance in first-year students, Taylor hopes to support students’ growth in demanding learning environments.
Taylor proposes to explore multiple strategies during his Board of Governors Teaching Chair project — from creating an interdisciplinary working group to identifying core executive function skills to integrate into foundational courses, to developing a post-secondary transition program that builds upon and synthesizes existing transitional programs at ULethbridge, such as the Indigenous Student Success Certificate, the Early Start Experience, StartSmart and the Global Citizenship Cohort.