The event, now in its 32nd year, highlights the exceptional quality of teaching tools produced in French for college-level and undergraduate students. It is also a time for recognizing the excellent pedagogical contributions of instructors in higher education while encouraging members of education networks to produce their own teaching materials.

"More than 138 works were submitted to the various selection committees this year. This high number and quality of the works bear witness to the commitment of Québec teaching professionals to their students' success," said Québec Education Minister Line Beauchamp.

Of the 138 works submitted, seven were selected for the competition's university stream, including the two from Polytechnique.

Guide des normes et conventions de représentation graphique

André Cincou, head lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was awarded a prize for his work in the Matériel complémentaire d'un cours (complementary course material) category. He designed the guide in order to improve the quality of learning in technical drawing for future engineers enrolled at Polytechnique with a view to meeting the industry's needs. Technical drawing makes it possible to design products using a graphic language that is governed by standards and conventions. The guide adopts a new approach, aiming to explain and illustrate these standards and conventions in a structured and explicit way. Used both in lectures and in hands-on projects in technical drawing courses, this reference work can provide a structure for teachers. Using the guide also allows students to save time in learning concepts, to learn independently, and to take a structured approach to analyzing problems. The guide will likely be published in the near future by Presses internationales Polytechnique.

A Polytechnique graduate in civil engineering, Mr. Cincou began his career at Polytechnique as a lecturer in 1991, teaching technical drawing classes for several years. Since 2002, he has served as co-ordinator. In collaboration with his team, he has developed new teaching methods, worked on course restructuring, and developed a new problem-solving strategy for orthogonal projection with two complete views for which he was awarded a grant. Mr. Cincou earned his master's degree in civil engineering in 2009.To provide students with high-quality tools and teaching, he also worked to develop teaching software to complement the pedagogical structure set out in the guide.

Left to right : Christiane Piché, Assistant Deputy Minister of Higher Education, and André Cincou.

L'Agrapheur

Alain Hertz, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering, earned an award in the category Mention spéciale (special mention) for his book. Published by Presses internationales Polytechnique in March 2010, L'Agrapheur takes a fun approach to teaching graph theory, a mathematical discipline with many applications, by using police detective stories. A robbery and holdup, an inheritance-related imposter case, the disappearance of a laboratory mouse, and other cases are some of the many investigations led by police Inspector Maurice Manori. Since no prerequisite knowledge is needed to understand the logic problems discussed, the book is accessible to a broad readership. While it is addressed primarily at college or university students who like solving mysteries and to teachers who want to introduce their students to this theory, still not well known, the book may certainly be of interest to people who love logic problems and Sudoku puzzles.
 
Mr. Hertz has a number of points in common with the protagonist of his book, Inspector Manori. He studied in Switzerland and lives in Montréal, but most of all, he's been working with graphs for 25 years. He holds a doctorate in science from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. An internationally reputed researcher, he has more than 150 publications to his credit, most of them dealing with graph theory. He applies this science mainly in the fields of schedule management and logistics systems optimization. Following research work in Jerusalem and Lausanne, he moved to Montréal in 2001, where he began his career at Polytechnique as a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering. He is on a mission to share his passion for graphs by promoting them all over the world, among others by making them interesting and accessible to all.

In Alain Hertz's absence, Pierre Baptiste, Director of the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, accepted the award. He is shown here with Christiane Piché, Assistant Deputy Minister of Higher Education.

Prix de la ministre

The Prix de la ministre awards were created for college-level works in 1978 and extended to the university undergraduate level in 1997. In 2010, the Ministère entrusted the management and hosting of the competition to the AQPC, which presents the award ceremony during its annual conference. The AQPC shares the mandate with the Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS).

Polytechnique is proud to congratulate André Cincou and Alain Hertz for their significant contributions to student success!

To find out more
Prix de la ministre
http://www.mels.gouv.qc.ca/ministere/prixMinistre (in French)

Presses internationales Polytechnique
http://www.polymtl.ca/pub/?l=eng

Source : Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport (MELS)