The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University is honoring 34 faculty and staff with awards for their accomplishments. The recipients will be recognized at the Fall Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty/Staff Convocation on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009.
The recipients and their awards include:
Early Achievement in Teaching Award – recognizes tenured or tenure-track faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding teaching performance unusually early in their professional careers.
• Dennis Chamberlin, assistant professor, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dennis Chamberlin maintains a rigorous, challenging classroom environment. His courses earn standout evaluation scores from students because of his creative, innovative methods. An example was his study abroad course to Poland that led to the creation of a web site exposing Iowa State students to global perspectives and images through the lens. Dennis Chamberlin regularly enhances his teaching effectiveness with visits to newsrooms, seminars and conventions, and he uses that network to place his students in exciting internships. • Julia Dominguez, assistant professor of Spanish, department of world languages and cultures. Dominguez-Castellano has made creative and transformative contributions to the Spanish curriculum and has established an outstanding record as a classroom teacher and as a mentor to majors and minors in the Spanish program. She has been successful in creating a positive atmosphere in which students improve their language proficiency, gain greater self-confidence, and become more aware of the cultures they study, and how these skills are applicable to their career goals. She is the truest example of a professor with high expectations of her students and who actively elevates her students to satisfy those expectations.
Outstanding Achievement in Teaching – recognizes faculty members for outstanding teaching performances over an extended period of time in undergraduate education.
• Mark Hargrove, associate professor, biochemistry and biophysics. Dr. Hargrove has been a faculty member at Iowa State University for the last 10 years. He teaches both biochemistry and biophysics in the department of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology (BBMB). His teaching skills are broad ranging and as such have influenced large numbers of students pursuing degrees in biochemistry and related sciences. His passion for teaching complex material to undergraduate students and his unending enthusiasm for classroom teaching are clearly evident in student feedback and from colleagues across campus who have either taken his courses or invite him regularly as a guest lecturer. • William Woodman, university professor, department of sociology. For three and a half decades Professor Woodman has made high quality and high standards teaching a central priority in his career; and, in doing so, his undergraduate and graduate students have celebrated his ability to make the love of learning contagious and fun. In addition to twice serving as teaching coordinator for this department, he has never stopped searching for new ways to engage students. He has excelled at not only innovative teaching, but in serving as a resource for his peers as well, with the result that his students and his colleagues have been the better for his efforts. His strong commitment to the highest quality of teaching and learning has not waivered over a long career, making him deserving of the title, “Outstanding Teacher.” • Jonathan Sturm, associate professor, department of music. Dr. Sturm is one of the most exemplary faculty members in the department of music. He has made highly significant contributions as a teacher and pedagogical scholar that have greatly strengthened ISU’s music program and its external reputation, while positively affecting virtually every ISU music student. He is known nationally and regionally as an authority in both music history pedagogy and string pedagogy, and as Concert Master of the Des Moines Symphony and violist in the Ames Piano Quartet, Dr. Sturm is recognized as one of the finest string players in the state.
Excellence in Undergraduate Introductory Teaching Award – recognizes outstanding performance in teaching undergraduate introductory (entry-level) classes.
• Doug Gentile, assistant professor, department of psychology. Dr. Gentile has raised the teaching of large introductory courses to a new level at Iowa State. Although he teaches 1,000 students a semester, he adapts his teaching to multiple learning styles. He uses active learning techniques, media, demonstrations, and achieves high student engagement in large lecture halls. Colleagues at ISU have claimed that he has “an extraordinary gift for teaching,” and that “he has all the characteristics of a great teacher in any setting, but somehow he seems to be particularly effective in large introductory classes.” To use the words of one of his students in Introductory Psychology, “He is an awesome asset to ISU.” • David Hollander, associate professor, department of history. Hollander is one of the exceptional undergraduate introductory teachers on the Iowa State University campus. One of the best signs of Dr. Hollander’s success at the introductory level is this: his upper division undergraduate courses are always the first to fill when registration opens. Dr. Hollander has an exceptionally large contingent of students who follow him from class to class, year to year. Even though the places and times about which he teaches, from the point of view of the average undergraduate, are remote and often quite obscure, students flock to his classes year after year.
Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award – recognizes major professors serving as effective mentors who enrich the student-professor relationship and who also excel in graduate classroom instruction.
• William Jenks, professor, department of chemistry. Professor Jenks joined the chemistry department at Iowa State in the Fall of 1992. He has taught mainly organic chemistry, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. His recognitions, prior to this award, include being named as an Outstanding Faculty member by the Greek community in 2006 and 2007, and the LAS Excellence in Teaching award in 2002. His enthusiasm for teaching must be contagious; roughly half of his graduate students have entered academic careers after their Ph.D. • Norm Scott, associate professor, department of psychology. Dr. Scott, the most senior member of the faculty of the nationally recognized program in counseling psychology, and a long-term (23 cumulative years) program director, has been a consistently active and productive graduate student mentor and an adept classroom instructor. He has directed 40 Ph.D. dissertations, 38 empirical research masters theses, and nine M.S. degrees based on annotated bibliographies. He has fostered timely completion of degrees, has been active in facilitating doctoral students’ acquisition of one-year internships at prestigious university counseling centers, and has frequently co-authored refereed papers with his graduate students at national conventions.
Early Achievement in Research Award – recognizes faculty who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in research and/or artistic creativity unusually early in their professional careers.
• Daniel Nordman, assistant professor, department of statistics. Nordman’s important contributions in empirical likelihood, long-range dependence, sampling, and spatial statistics have appeared in top-tier journals applying statistics to physics, chemistry, engineering, geostatistics, mining, economics, biology, and environmental science, and are featured in frequent invited international and national presentations. His research, with significant outside funding, compares methods for providing valid answers to a large class of statistical problems. External letter writers comment that his research “has made significant contributions to nonparametric inference for spatial and time series data” and that “Dan’s contributions to our field are first rate both in quantity and in quality.”
Mid-Career Achievement in Research Award – recognizes faculty members who have a national or international reputation for outstanding contributions in research and/or artistic creativity at the mid-career stage.
• Matthew Potoski, associate professor, department of political science. Since receiving his Ph.D. in 1998, Matt Potoski has 30 articles and two books either published or forthcoming at the very best journals and presses in the fields of Public Policy, Public Administration, and Political Science. His research in environmental policy and public contracting is not only shaping paradigms in those policy areas, but also generating theoretical insights that are impacting the larger field of public policy. He has already achieved a national and international reputation for the quality of his research as evidenced by invited talks both in the U.S. and abroad, grants, and publications. • Yanhai Yin, assistant professor, department of genetics, development and cell biology. In his relatively short scientific career, primarily at Iowa State University, Dr. Yin has developed stellar credentials for his ground breaking research through his formulation of the gene regulatory network for brassinosteroid endogenous plant growth-promoting hormone signaling in plants. His research papers have been published in some of the most prestigious scientific journals dealing with cutting edge research. His work is exciting, innovative and productive, and was recently honored by his receiving a highly acclaimed NSF Career Award. Dr. Yin exemplifies the next generation of plant scientists that will contribute to the enhancement of science at ISU and internationally.
Outstanding Career Achievement in Research Award – recognizes faculty members who have a national or international reputation for contributions in research and/or artistic creativity, and who have influenced the research activities of students.
• Carol Chapelle, professor of applied linguistics, department of English. Dr. Chapelle is the author of 10 books, numerous book chapters and refereed articles, and conference proceedings and presentations on the subjects of applied linguistics, computer-assisted learning, language learning, and language testing. Cutting-edge, seminal, rigorous, innovative, and visionary are the words professional reviewers often use to describe Chapelle’s scholarship. An international lecturer, Dr. Chapelle has been invited to deliver keynotes at institutes and universities all over the world, including Hawaii, Denmark, Wales, Spain, Korea, Singapore, and Morocco. In 2007 her book, Computer Applications in Second Language Acquisition: Foundations for Teaching, Testing, and Research (Cambridge University Press, 2001), was translated into Arabic. • Jianwei Qiu, professor, department of physics and astronomy. Professor Qiu received his Ph.D. degree in physics from Columbia University in 1987. He joined the department of physics and astronomy at ISU in 1991 and was promoted to his current position of professor in 2001. He is internationally recognized for his theoretical research in the area of Quantum Chromodynamics and its applications in both high energy particle and nuclear physics. He has published over 80 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has given more than 190 invited lectures. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2005.
Outstanding Achievement in Departmental Leadership Award – recognizes department chairs who have demonstrated exceptional leadership qualities in advancing the faculty, staff, students and programs in their departments.
• Jacob Petrich, professor and chair, department of chemistry. Petrich has had a lasting, campus-wide impact by mounting a successful campaign for a new chemistry building. The availability of state-of-the-art facilities will strengthen science and engineering throughout the university. It will raise the quality of education and research in chemistry, to the benefit of students in many different majors, and of collaborators from many disciplines. His other work as chair has also been exemplary. He has been very successful in retaining excellent faculty, hiring new faculty, improving gender balance within the department, and maintaining innovative teaching and research efforts while serving as chair. • Jonathan Wendel, professor and chair, department of ecology, evolution and organismal biology. Dr. Wendel is a leader who was selected to be chair during a challenging time of Biological Sciences reorganization at ISU. Since that time, the ecology, evolution and organismal biology department has “evolved” into a department with an enviable reputation for excellence in research and teaching as well as collegiality. Dr. Wendel’s positive energy, enthusiasm, and a touch of humor work well to create a department that is welcoming and a good place to work. He has made campus-wide impacts as a leader in the development of the Biological Sciences programs, ADVANCE efforts, and as a mentor for other chairs.
Academic Advising Impact – Recognizes faculty or professional staff who have continued to demonstrate outstanding performance in advising Liberal Arts and Sciences undergraduate students throughout their professional careers.
• Thomas Greenbowe, professor of chemistry, curriculum and instruction. Greenbowe has been an outstanding advisor, mentor, and educator to numerous undergraduate students at ISU for over 19 years. Tom is the primary advisor for students interested in pursuing high school science and chemistry teaching while also pursuing a physical science degree. He was instrumental in setting up a scholarship program for undergraduates who expressed an interest in high school chemistry teaching, as well as providing thorough and thoughtful guidance for career and curricular goals to his advisees as well as insights and valuable information for other academic advisors.
Ruth W. Swenson Award for Outstanding Advising – recognizes outstanding performance as an undergraduate academic adviser over an extended period of time.
• Amy Froelich, associate professor, department of statistics. Dr. Froelich has played an influential role in helping her advisees succeed at ISU and beyond. Through her individual work with advisees, her service as Advising Coordinator for the department of statistics, her revamping of the department’s new major orientation course, and her innovative work as an Honors Advisor, Dr. Froelich has gone beyond the call of duty to improve undergraduate advising on many levels. She is also a key player in the Iowa Initiative for College Mathematics and Statistics Education and in promoting additional statistical preparation for future and in-service 5-12 mathematics teachers.
Early Achievement in Academic Advising – recognizes ISU faculty or staff who have demonstrated outstanding performance in advising undergraduate students early in their professional careers.
• Kim McDonough, academic advisor and internship coordinator, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. McDonough’s advising philosophy includes such tenets as “Make It Student-Centered” and “Help Students Realize Their Individual Potential.” She does this and more – so much so, in fact, that it is difficult to believe she is one person. She advises hundreds of pre-majors, coordinates our capstone internship programs, presents papers at conferences, helps with assessment, and teaches our introductory journalism orientation class. She has set new advising and internship standards in the Greenlee School and is a model of collegiality. • Joseph Burnett, senior lecturer, department of chemistry. Burnett has been enthusiastically engaged in undergraduate advising since becoming a senior lecturer in chemistry in 2005. While providing thorough and thoughtful guidance to several undergraduate chemistry majors for their career and curricular goals, he works with advisors in other departments to help identify appropriate introductory courses for their majors, which require chemistry in their curricula. He also serves as the chair of the local Ames section of the American Chemical Society, which provides travel fellowships for students to attend national meetings and brings in chemists from around the country to meet with our students and faculty.
Professional & Scientific Excellence Award – recognizes and honors professional and scientific employees who have achieved excellence in their respective fields.
• Claudia Lemper, laboratory coordinator, undergraduate biology program with appointment in genetics, development and cell biology. Lemper, coordinator of the second-year general biology laboratory courses in the Biology Undergraduate Program, exemplifies the ultimate P&S staff member who provides leadership, training and organization to the very large biology courses she is responsible for. Her expertise in cellular and molecular biology, her mentoring skills in teaching graduates how to teach, and her organizational skills and fiscal management of the very large course budget all indicate that the undergraduate students in the courses, the teaching graduate assistants and the Undergraduate Biology Program are in excellent, skilled and professional hands. Dr. Lemper is worthy of this high recognition. • Michael Schmidt, associate scientist, department of chemistry. Schmidt is a world-renowned scientist. He is regularly sought after to give talks at national and international meetings, and his contributions to the electronic structure program GAMESS is internationally recognized. He is extremely knowledgeable about both computer hardware and software, and he contributes large amounts of his time to counsel faculty, students and staff in chemistry, chemical engineering, the biological sciences, physics, and materials science and engineering about computational chemistry and its applications. He spends many hours each week with students from all parts of the university, teaching these students the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and computational chemistry.
Professional & Scientific Outstanding New Professional Award – recognizes and honors new professional and scientific employees who quickly have achieved excellence in their respective fields.
• Kristin Anderson, accountant. Anderson has significantly impacted the department of English by bringing her impressive accounting skills, her commitment to teamwork, her disciplined approach to financial stewardship, and her level-headedness and even temperament to work every day as she tracks and untangles the threads of expenses and the streams of revenue that allow a large department of scholars with ambitious research programs, and many robust undergraduate and graduate degrees in several sub-disciplines, to function on a daily basis. One support letter states, “We are extremely fortunate to have hired an employee as competent, dedicated, creative, and genuinely kind and helpful as Kristin.” • Nancy Rosenquist, administrative specialist, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. If asked to encapsulate Nancy Rosenquist’s skills and contributions to the LAS College and to the University in just two words, “responsibility” and “dedication” would rise to the top. As an administrative specialist, she contributes daily to providing the best possible academic experience for undergraduates, and is always willing to invest hours above and beyond the standard 40 per week to complete projects accurately and on-time. Rosenquist is one of those rare people who possess not only extraordinary quantitative, analytical, and technical skills but qualities such as patience, compassion, and an overall interest in people that make her an outstanding ambassador for Iowa State University.
Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Lecturer – recognizes lecturers or senior lecturers for outstanding teaching performance over an extended period of time in undergraduate education.
• David Flory, lecturer, department of geological and atmospheric sciences. Flory brings enormous passion and dedication to educating students inside and outside the classroom and to making a difference in every student’s life. He covers a wide range of courses in the meteorology major and consistently receives excellent scores in student evaluations despite his high expectations and rigorous standards for student achievement. Flory is renowned for his ability to explain difficult concepts in a comprehensible fashion and to make classroom material seem relevant. He is an essential selling point in recruiting new students to the meteorology program. • Warren Phillips, senior lecturer, department of psychology. Dr. Phillips has been a lecturer at ISU since 1996, and a senior lecturer since 2006. In that time he has demonstrated outstanding teaching skills, including the ability to teach both large and small classes, to teach both introductory and doctoral level classes, and to teach at all levels – from novices to experts. This is a rare set of skills. He effectively uses a variety of learning techniques in his teaching, including examples from real world practice, student presentations, role playing, and other active learning techniques. These are all “best practices” of effective teachers, and demonstrate that he is an Outstanding Teacher. • Paula Herrera-Siklody – senior lecturer, department of physics and astronomy. Dr. Herrera-Siklody joined the department of physics and astronomy as a lecturer in August 2002 and was promoted to senior lecturer in August 2008. Her main teaching activities have been in Physics 221, Introduction to Classical Physics, with about 400 to 700 students enrolled per semester, and Physics 501, Oral Communication of Physics Seminar, with about 20 physics students per semester. She has been highly dedicated to her teaching and very innovative in her approach to these courses. The favorable student evaluations indicate the appreciation the students have for her enthusiasm and passion for teaching and for her teaching innovations.
Institutional Service Award – recognizes a member of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty for a history of exemplary institutional service that has benefited the department, college and/or the university.
• Donna Kienzler – professor, department of English. Since 2001, Dr. Kienzler has worked with over 350 graduate students from all disciplines across the university in the Preparing Future Faculty Program (PFF), a program she designed to enable graduate students to acquire critical professional tools and skills. Dr. Kienzler has also mentored 20 M.A. and Ph.D. students on thesis and dissertation projects, as well as designed a Graduate Student Teaching Certificate program. “The greatest lesson I have learned from the PFF program is that you have to be passionate about what you are teaching,” one graduate student noted. “I have learned this from observing the PFF instructor, Donna Kienzler.”
Professional & Scientific Award for Excellence in Information Technology – recognizes and honors P&S employees working in the filed of information technology who have demonstrated excellence in their position responsibilities.
• Michael Brekke – systems support specialist, department of genetics, development and cell biology. Mr. Brekke came to ISU in 1998 to start his IT specialist career. A good IT specialist not only fixes problems when they happen, but preemptively protects the systems from major failures. The fact that Mr. Brekke can listen to machine noise and know a cooling fan is about to fail attests to his great experience accumulated in his job. In the past 10 years, Mr. Brekke has helped modernize the way the GDCB Department does its business using the Internet, and he has assisted various faculty and staff with their IT needs. His enormous contributions are worthy of recognition. • Ted Peterson – analyst, department of statistics. Ted provides outstanding IT support for the department of statistics. He is knowledgeable, passionate, and effective. He has completely revamped and upgraded the Department’s IT infrastructure over the past five years. While the Department has been dislocated from Snedecor Hall, Ted has worked tirelessly moving equipment and supporting a faculty and teaching effort dispersed across campus. He created new computer labs in Pearson and Carver Halls to support the Statistics teaching mission during the dislocation. He has designed labs for the new Snedecor that will use advanced thin client technologies, promising to ease maintenance and reduce equipment and electrical costs.
Merit Excellence Award – recognizes and honors Merit employees who have achieved excellence in their respective fields.
• Yolanda Gamboa – secretary, Institute for Social and Behavioral Research. Gamboa has assisted countless Principal Investigators in submitting their grant applications over the past 14 years at the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research (ISBR). Her commitment to excellence, her artistry in designing and typing complex charts and figures, her mastery of ever-changing government forms, and her willingness to work virtually around the clock to meet deadlines have made her an invaluable member of the ISBR team. Gamboa is truly at the center of ISBR. Because of her, ISBR runs smoothly, even in times of crisis. She is dedicated and highly professional in everything she does. • Paul Hollander – laboratory technician, department of chemistry. Hollander’s work as the senior technician in the Chemistry Department’s undergraduate laboratories involves working closely with faculty, teaching assistants and the students in the lab course to keep the courses running smoothly and help everyone achieve success. His patient and calm attitude and high standard for his work make him a valued colleague and a great asset for the department and the university. • Claudia Mueller – secretary, department of world languages and cultures. In the six years that she has worked in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, Mueller has made valuable contributions to building a positive and supportive working environment. Her friendliness, calm nature, flexibility, and professionalism brought about a change in department culture, and she continues to work well with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and donors. Mueller not only excels in her management of the department’s budget, she provides essential support for the chair and faculty in the effective administration of funds and grants. Mueller is able to address the needs of a department with many diverse faculty and curricula. As the initial contact person for the department, Mueller is frequently the “face of the department” for new faculty, students, staff, and administrators across the ISU campus. • Donna Otto – secretary, department of economics. Otto is part of the glue that holds the Department of Economics together. From technical typing, to processing paperwork, to arranging meetings, to handling massive recruitment files, Otto quietly and efficiently assists faculty members with projects in a way that brings order to chaos. Otto has worked in the Department of Economics since 1979 for a multitude of faculty members, performing a multitude of tasks — all with a high degree of excellence.
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NEWS RELEASE College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Iowa State University
Contacts: Dawn Bratsch-Prince, Liberal Arts & Sciences Associate Dean, (515) 294-7740 (deprince@iastate.edu) Laura Engelson, Liberal Arts & Sciences Communications, (515) 294-7742 (lge@iastate.edu)