CENTRE FOR TEACHING
EXCELLENCE & INNOVATION

TFS Announces Recipient and Honourees of the 2025 President’s Award for Teaching Excellence

We at CTEI are so excited and proud to boost the signal of the Toronto Film School (TFS) President’s Award for Teaching Excellence results for the 2025 year – with our second-ever Recipient as well as x3 Honourees of the Award revealed!

Toronto Film School recently announced Andrés Sevilla as the 2025 recipient of its President’s Award for Teaching Excellence – an annual award celebrating faculty who inspire and facilitate learning in ways that have a positive and sustained influence on our students.

Launched in 2024, the award is the highest honour for teaching at Toronto Film School. Its recipients not only exemplify our Core Values, but demonstrate exceptional abilities to encourage and motivate students, to create supportive and inclusive learning environments, to foster student success within and beyond the classroom, and to reflect upon and refine their teaching practice.

In addition to Sevilla, who teaches in the Graphic Design & Interactive Media program, TFS also recognized three honourees for the award: Matt McDonald (Acting for Film, TV & the Theatre); Hisham Ata (Video Game Design & Development); and Blain Watters (Writing for Film & Television).

Read the full TFS article on the 2025 TFS President’s Award for Teaching Excellence for more information and stories of these incredible faculty!

Matthew Dunleavy wearing a pink and purple polka-dot shirt under a grey blazer with red-framed glasses and a long reddish-brown beard smiling into the camera
Matthew Dunleavy

Senior Educational Developer, Faculty Excellence and Development

[email protected] 

Matthew Dunleavy (he/him) is an educational developer and scholarly teacher with over 10+ years’ experience. In addition to working at the CTEI, Matthew serves as the Vice-Chair of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE). Before joining the CTEI, Matthew was an Educational Developer in the Teaching Commons at York University; before entering that role, he served as the Program Director of the Online Learning and Technology Consultants (OLTC) Program at the Maple League of Universities (Acadia University; Bishop’s University; Mount Allison University; and St. Francis Xavier University). In 2022, he was awarded the D2L Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning by STLHE for this work.