Past HERDSA President and life member Denise Chalmers has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her significant service to tertiary education and to professional associations. This honour is the latest recognition of the outstanding contribution Denise has made to higher education teaching and learning throughout her distinguished career as the director of two university centres of teaching and learning, as a Foundation Director of the Carrick Institute and as President of the Council of Australian Directors of Academic Development (CADAD). It stands alongside her many other awards including an OLT National Senior Teaching Fellowship and Australian Award for University Teaching.

Denise has made significant contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education and is perhaps best known for her leadership in developing and embedding teaching quality criteria for the use of teaching and learning performance indicators. In her article for HERDSA Review of Higher Education with Lynne Hunt, Denise argued that anyone who takes their teaching seriously would want to know if they are a good teacher. While embracing the language of performance management Denise fought the perception that evaluation is something that was done to university teachers. Her goal has always been to put the tools for answering the question of teaching quality into the hands of university teachers so that they can tell a compelling story about their teaching to students, colleagues and other stakeholders in the learning experience.

Chalmers, D. & Hunt, L. (2016). Evaluation of teaching. HERDSA Review of Higher Education, Vol. 3. pp. 25-55.
Free online at https://www.herdsa.org.au/herdsa-review-higher-education-vol-3/25-55