We asked Ashley Stasiewich, a sessional instructor in the Paralegal Studies program, is the recipient of a 2024 Sessional Instructor Teaching Excellence Award, to share her journey. She spoke about her own experience as a MacEwan student, how a part-time job set her on a path to teaching and how much she admires her students.

Your university career began right here at MacEwan? 

I was a Bachelor of Arts transfer student majoring in history. In my first year, I needed a part-time job and ended up filing at a law firm one day a week, then worked as a legal assistant over the summer. That’s where my legal career began. 

Before you made your way back into MacEwan’s classrooms as a faculty member, you earned a second undergraduate degree in education, working as a legal assistant the whole time. How did you find your way into post-secondary teaching?

It wasn’t the original plan, but graduating in the peak of 2012 meant there weren’t any K to 12 teaching jobs. When my law firm asked me to take on a new paralegal role to help clients with quasi-criminal matters, I seized the opportunity.

I learned a lot from going to court, running trials and holding my own client roster. I eventually became the office manager and started supervising students in MacEwan’s legal assistant program (now known as the paralegal program.) I just loved it. I still felt this desire to teach, even though there wasn’t a place for me in the K to 12 system, so when I saw a posting to teach a single course at MacEwan, I threw in my hat.

Four years later, you hold a sessional extended appointment and a master’s degree, and you’re working on your doctorate. What do you think stands out most about your teaching? 

Paralegal programs are not regulated, Alberta has no standardization and we don’t have textbooks to draw from. That means I’ve spent a lot of time developing materials and writing courses to support students as they progress into this career. When I started teaching at MacEwan, one of my goals was to create excellent materials. 

I love seeing my students thrive – they’re much smarter than me. I love sitting and talking to them and asking them what draws them to the program. So many of my students already have a degree and are pursuing a second career. They have so many great ideas of what they want to accomplish. I’m just so thankful that I get to spend time with them and learn from them every single day. I know that these students are going to change the world. 

Does having sat in the same seats as your students (perhaps literally?!?) influence the way you teach? 

I think so. There is a certain sense of nostalgia walking around campus and thinking about how I felt when I was here as a student. 

I always tell my students that I was a terrible student – really awful. I was on academic probation after my first semester. That influences how I teach. Education did not come easy to me, and it still doesn’t. I have had to work very hard to get to where I am today, and I think that gives me a different perspective. 

I spend time with my students. I put my chair next to theirs in the classroom. I schedule work blocks to make sure that I have the time to sit and get to know them as humans. Those conversations help me design learning materials for the different ways students learn. 

Something you love to teach?

The capstone course is my absolute favourite. It's tough to teach – I'm trying to prepare students for practicum in one semester. They do large-scale projects (recording a podcast, writing an article or blog, creating a video or contributing a chapter to my open-access legal research textbook) and the products they create are amazing.

Most memorable moment?

There are so many examples every single semester. It fills my cup. Last term, my students gifted me a cup with the logo of the fictional firm I use in all of my course materials. My students are great, and I get a lot of recognition from them, but seeing the university recognize sessional work is a whole different feeling. I think it’s really important.