“Entertainment is such an important part of teaching” – Michelle Cadieux’s journey from struggling undergrad to award-winning instructor

Michelle Cadieux proves a little humour goes a long way when teaching to full houses in McMaster’s largest lecture theatres.

For each class, she wears a different set of offbeat psychology-themed earrings gifted to her by a former teaching assistant. The 20-piece handcrafted collection includes miniature brains, eyeballs and ears plus mice in cages and raw steaks with bells.

There’s Michelle’s closet at home jammed full of Halloween costumes, the stories and skits she weaves into her lectures along with self-deprecating humour plus jokes gently told at the expense of professor Joe Kim whenever they teach classes together.

There are the semester-long storylines that teaching assistants are told to bake into their tutorials, complete with cliffhangers, plot twists and grand finales. This year’s storyline was built around the Broadway musical and Disney movie Wicked. Previous storylines included Harry Potter and an army of gnomes bent on world domination. Michelle and Joe also recruit TAs to face off against each other while doing demonstrations during online lectures. “We turn the demos into competitions with students choosing sides and cheering on their favourite TA over in the chatroom.”

That sense of humour and open embrace of having fun helped Michelle, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior, earn a 2025 Teaching Excellence Award from the McMaster Students Union.

She credits four people for the student-nominated award. First up are her parents – “they’ve always been my biggest supporters and we’re a really funny family. I was lucky to inherit their sense of humour.”

There’s psychology professor David Shore, who was her former undergraduate and graduate supervisor. David gave Michelle her first big break by making her a sessional instructor for some of his courses, complete with his lecture notes and slides.  “It was such an incredible opportunity and David was there whenever I needed help.”

Michelle says she always felt comfortable getting in front of a classroom as a student and teaching assistant. “But it was David who really pushed me. He thought I was good but had the potential to be great if I was willing to work at it and be open to feedback.” Michelle welcomed the mentoring, even when the feedback got into the nitty-gritty.

And then there’s Joe. Right from the start, he encouraged Michelle to be herself when delivering lectures. “I started out being more serious as a teaching assistant and sessional instructor. But Joe taught me that entertainment is such an important part of teaching. If students are having a good time, they’re more likely to pay attention and learn more.”

The proof is in attendance rates that average around 85 per cent for their in-person courses. “When students show up, they inspire me to show up and give my absolute best as an instructor.”

It’s not all fun and games in the intro psych course, says Michelle. “Some students sign up thinking it’s a bird course. They quickly realize it’s not. This is a content-heavy course. Yet we’ve designed it in a way that every student can be successful if they’re willing to follow the program and make the effort. Humour helps keeps them engaged.”

Michelle and Joe also designed their course to ease the transition to university and help students develop study habits and time management skills, through weekly quizzes and marks for attendance and participation.

Those habits and skills weren’t something Michelle had until her third year of undergrad at McMaster. “I didn’t know how to study or manage my time. Every student assumes their professors were brilliant right from their first day at university. I definitely wasn’t.”

She was feeling lost in courses that dwarfed the entire enrolment in her French immersion high school in Whitby – there were just 49 students in her graduating class. And it seemed like every student at Mac had been the top student at their high school. The one big upside – “lots of new friends and lots of invitations to get together after class” – nearly proved to be her undoing. And on top of it all, like every science student, she originally planned to go to medical school but soon changed her mind and couldn’t come up with a Plan B. “I didn’t know why I was here.”

She fell in love with psychology during first year and eventually set her sights on grad school.  But she had middling marks that made her plan seem like a long shot. Advice from a student in one of her third-year study groups was a game-changer. “I started to think of my undergrad degree as a 40-hour-a-week full-time job. I started doing work between classes rather than leave it all for the weekend when there was never enough hours to get it all done without burning out.”

Michelle also met with Ann Hollingshead who at the time was the department’s undergraduate advisor and research coordinator. Michelle raved about a second-year course taught by David. Ann put in a good word on Michelle’s behalf. “My marks weren’t as good as the students David usually welcomed into his lab but Ann vouched for me, telling David that my marks were moving in the right direction and that our personalities were well-matched. He agreed to supervise my fourth-year thesis project and the rest is history”

After completing her PhD, Michelle was looking to stay in academia as an administrator. She applied to work as the coordinator for the department’s intro psych courses. With upwards of 6,000 students to teach and a crew of 40 teaching assistants to recruit, train and supervise, it would be a demanding job. “But it was the only job I wanted.”

She got an interview with Joe and it went well. “Joe told me I would’ve been great in the role but he was giving it to someone else.” When the preferred candidate turned the offer down for a job closer to home, Joe went back to Michelle. “And I’ve never let him forget it,” says Michelle.

They’ve brought complementary skills to a first-year course that has among the highest enrolments at McMaster. “Joe’s the ideas guy – the innovator and mad genius. Ninety per cent of his ideas aren’t doable but that other 10 per cent is pure gold. I’m the person who’s good at figuring out how to make other people’s dreams come true and find a way to make that 10 per cent happen. And I’m not afraid to point out when something we’ve tried isn’t sustainable or isn’t working for students.”

Early on in their collaboration, Joe asked Michelle a question that changed everything. “He wanted to know if this was just a job that I was going to do for a couple years or if I intended to make this my career. Was I committed to doing this work forever? I said yes and then Joe said ‘well then let’s go teach this course and make it something amazing for students’.  And that’s what we’ve done with constant tweaking, best practices in teaching and learning, a sense of humour and whole lot of fun.”