Dr. Gabriela Hamerlinck (Gaby), an instructional faculty at the University of Florida, is an exceptional geography teacher. Her innovative and rigorous courses focus her students on applied activities and real-world examples such as designing a global pandemic response plan, critiquing how disease is portrayed in popular culture, or creating a zombie movie! She requires students to write, provides detailed feedback, and promotes constructive peer review between students.
Hamerlinck incorporates participatory approaches to teach culturally diverse topics. Examples of her creativity include low technology ‘nanobugs’ as an example ‘game’ on how diseases spread; and social media ‘campaigns’ for effective educational programs. She created multiple new courses, including a required UF Quest course “The Next Pandemic” which she was teaching when COVID hit. Gaby also developed Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) for Geography. This CURE platform increases undergraduate research in the geography department and serves as a pedagogical tool shown to increase learning gains and retention for all students, especially those who have been historically excluded from higher education.
Hamerlinck is also a highly trained PhD in mathematical biology and offers her students a fresh perspective on those tools in geography. In each semester she teaches, more students find geography, and many pursue the discipline as a major. Hamerlinck has also taken several of her courses through the University of Florida’s rigorous processes for confirming access for all.
For these reasons and many more, the AAG is proud to recognize Dr. Gabriela Hamerlinck with the 2023 AAG Harm J. de Blij Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Geography Teaching.