Introduction

My name is Peter Smith and I am a lecture and researcher at the University of Auckland. I am based in the Department of Management & International Business which is part of Faculty of Business & Economics.

I began tutoring here in 1997, and became a full-time lecturer in 1999. In 2005, on top of my teaching responsibilities I was appointed deputy director of the Auckland MBA™ programme

Prior to the University of Auckland, I worked for twenty years in a number of information technology and communication businesses--mainly in the UK and Europe, but also here in New Zealand. Consequently, I see myself as a practicing manager who now teaches and researches, rather than a career academic. As you will see elsewhere in this portfolio, this practitioner/academic mix permeates my teaching. This mixture means that I am interested in the area of general management and strategy, and this has been the focus of my main teaching.

My research interests are aligned with my teaching interests, in that it is based on practice of strategy; specifically, I am interested in how an individual's practice of management and strategy, in an organisation, makes a difference to the firm's strategy. Necessarily, I would say, this means that I am also interested in management education as a topic of research, and how an individual in a business school can affect the practice of strategy in the practitioner community.

I am English and I emigrated to New Zealand from the UK in 1989. I regard New Zealand as my home, and thus I became a New Zealand citizen in 1993.

My purpose for this portfolio

This portfolio is my attempt to document and demonstrate my scholarship in teaching. Overall, I have been largely successful in my teaching. That does not mean that every student "loves me", but it does mean that I have striven to have a positive impact on students' learning.

This is echoed in the words of one of my colleagues:-

Peter Smith is one of the most dedicated teachers I have ever met, if not the most dedicated. His ideas and innovations have inspired, and will inspire, my teaching practice. He is truly concerned about student learning and high academic standards. -- Marc Orlitzky

and in the words of one of my students:-

As a lecturer Peter has a genuine love of teaching his students new things. His approach towards them is a challenging and a forthright one, where he tries to evoke lateral thinking, rather than just text-book thinking. Coupled with a passion for the topic and a friendly outlook, Peter was able to motivate and encourage students to get more out of their learning. -- Mehreen Ahmed

Over the years I have actively sought to improve my teaching. This has manifested itself in four main ways:

  1. A focus on the learning experience of students, and the outcomes that are produced by those experiences.
  2. An orientation towards, and a valuing of, the scholarship of teaching.
  3. A quest to improve my teaching as evident in the teaching innovations I have developed, adopted, and promoted.
  4. A desire to support and assist my colleagues in enhancing their own teaching practice.

I hope that, having read this portfolio, you will be able to see the impact of my teaching.