UMD is proud to announce the following faculty award recipients for the 2009-2010 academic year. The winners were honored at a reception at UMD on May 3.
University of Minnesota System Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education
This honor is awarded to exceptional candidates nominated by collegiate units in their quest to identify excellence in graduate education.
Dr. Kang Ling James is a professor in the UMD Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Swenson College of Science and Engineering (SCSE). She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley in Statistics. After spending some years at the Institute for Pure And Applied Mathematics in Rio de Janeiro, helping to start the first graduate program in Statistics in Brazil, Dr. James joined UMD in 1988.
Dr. James was part of the initiation and development of the probability and statistics component of the M.S. in Applied and Computational Mathematics. During her past 20 years, Dr. James has advised or co-advised 49 Master's projects on a broad range of topics, many of them related to her annual summer research at Berkeley. She was the recipient of the SCSE Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award in 1999 and the UMD Jean G. Blehart Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002.
UMD Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award
Faculty members who receive this award are honored for their excellence in research, scholarly contributions to their field and for their dedication to student research in education.
Joseph Gallian obtained a B.A. from Slippery Rock University in 1966, an M.A. from the University of Kansas in 1968 and a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1971. After serving as a visiting Assistant Professor at Notre Dame for one year, he joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Among his honors are President of Mathematical Association of America (MAA), UMD Morse Alumni Distinguished University Teaching Professor, the MAA Haimo Award for distinguished teaching, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Minnesota Professor of the Year, the MAA Allendoerfer and Evans award for exposition, a MAA Polya Lecturer.
Since 1977 over 150 research papers written under his supervision by undergraduates in his summer research program have been published in mainstream journals. Ninety-five of the 149 program participants who have received their Bachelor's degrees have gone to graduate school at MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, or Stanford and 106 have won graduate fellowships. Eighty-five of the participants now have their Ph.D. degree.
Professor Gallian has given more than 250 invited lectures at conferences and colleges and universities and is the author or editor of five books and more than 100 articles. Besides the usual math courses, he has taught a Humanities course called The Lives and Music of the Beatles for more than 25 years and a liberal arts course on math and sports. In 2000 the Duluth Budgeteer sited him as one of the 100 Great Duluthians.
Jean G. Blehart Distinguished Teaching Award
This honor is given each year to a faculty member who has made contributions to the teaching mission of UMD that are of extraordinary quality.
Bruce Peckham earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1988 from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMTC). Following a two-year postdoctoral position at Boston University, he came to UMD, where he has been a member of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics since 1990.
Professor Peckham held sabbatical positions at the Institute Nonlinear de Nice in France, the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and the Department of Applied Math at the University of Bristol in Bristol, England. He is currently Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Professor Peckham has advised twenty-five undergraduate and graduate research projects, and supervised several teams of undergraduate students—many of whom have performed well nationally in the annual Mathematical Contest in Modeling. He has also been the Math Club advisor for many years. His research area is Dynamical Systems, which includes the mathematical study of chaos.
His research, which has been supported by three National Science Foundation grants, includes both theoretical study of dynamical systems, and use of dynamical systems to model ecological populations. Professor Peckham has coauthored articles with faculty and students from UMD, and faculty from UMTC, Princeton University, and universities in England, France and Switzerland. He has given over fifty talks at colloquia and conferences across Minnesota, the United States, and Europe.
Albert Tezla Teacher/Scholar Award
This award is given annually to a faculty member in the College of Liberal Arts or the School of Fine Arts who has an exceptional and effective teaching style that emphasizes the worth of research in a learned discipline and the maturing impact scholarly activity has on the development of human attitudes and values.
Alison Aune received her B.F.A. degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1984, her M.A. from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 1987 and Ph.D. from Ohio University Athens in 2000. She served as education coordinator at the Tweed Museum of Art before joining the UMD Department of Art and Design. Her scholarly interests include museum-based teacher training, women artists in history and international art education. She and her students have developed curriculum and intergenerational learning experiences using Scandinavian, Portuguese, Turkish, Finnish and American Indian art.
Ms. Aune has received numerous grants and awards including a Fulbright Scholar and Teaching award to Sweden, a grant to conduct a Cross-Cultural Study of Socio-Aesthetic Goals of Art Education in Scandinavia, the UMD Outstanding Adviser Award, the Art Educator's of Minnesota Museum Educator of the Year Award and a Jerome Foundation International Artist Travel Grant. She has published chapters, articles and on-line instructional resources on art education and museum-based learning for children and youth. The publication of her book, The Art of Coral Sandel: A Norwegian Painter and Writer, is forthcoming. Ms. Aune has exhibited her artwork in over 70 solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and Sweden and she regularly presents guest lectures and workshops internationally, nationally and regionally.
UMD Outstanding Faculty Advisor Awards
The Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award is given each year to faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding service to their students.
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