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2001 Honors: College of Engineering

Teaching Excellence Award
Victoria Coverstone, professor of aeronautical and astronautical engineering, teaches key undergraduate courses. She sees the students as they are beginning their studies, a crucial time for them to validate their choice of discipline major. She also teaches senior design, the course that brings to fruition all that the students have learned in their previous three years. Students and alumni have praised the role that she has played in their undergraduate education and career development and she has won many teaching awards and honors.

Tau Beta Pi Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award
Wen-mei W. Hwu, professor of electrical and computer engineering, is a leader in the fields of computer architecture and compiler technology. His pioneering work laid the foundations for a revolution in high-performance microprocessors in the computer industry. In the face of commercial failures and pessimistic projections in the late 1980s and early 1990s concerning the application of instruction-level parallelism to future microprocessors, Hwu took leadership by constructing IMPACT, a new compiler that can generate efficient code with far more parallelism than most researchers and engineers envisioned. His work has become the technology base of new compilers in major companies, and his research group has become a premier source of advance compiler technology for the U.S. microprocessor industry. The award demonstrates the ideals of Daniel C. Drucker, dean of the college from 1968 to 1984.

The Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence
Peter Chen, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Jeff G. Erickson, professor of computer science, were honored for teaching excellence. Chen provides the guidance that motivates students to explore and understand concepts they initially think are impossible to grasp and weaves real-world examples into lectures and homework to show how important and relevant students’ education is to their careers. Erickson is an enthusiastic and creative teacher of some of the most difficult subjects in computer science. By creating a challenging, dynamic environment, he encourages students to be curious. In return, he is adept at guiding discussion and framing explanations in a way that stimulates students to learn.
Established in 1968 to honor retiring Dean William L. Everitt, the award annually recognizes two or more faculty members in the College of Engineering for their outstanding undergraduate teaching. The award is one of the most coveted by faculty members and serves to emphasize the value that is attached to good teaching in the college. The teachers honored with this award were chosen by undergraduate students in the college.

Xerox Awards for Faculty Research
The Xerox Foundation established the Xerox Awards for Faculty Research to honor faculty members annually for outstanding research. Three awards are given to associate professors judged by colleagues to have conducted the best research during the past five academic years, and three awards are given to assistant professors judged by colleagues to have conducted the best research during the last academic year.
This year’s award winners are associate professors Jennifer A. Lewis, materials science and engineering/chemical engineering; Eric Michielssen, electrical and computer engineering; and Scott R. White, aeronautical and astronautical engineering; and assistant professors Naomi C.R. Makins, physics; Dan Roth, computer science; and Andrew Singer, electrical and computer engineering.

Collins Award for Innovative Teaching
Mats Selen, professor of physics, is an extraordinary teacher who creatively uses the power and interactivity of the Web to make instruction more responsive to students’ needs. Introduced to the "Just-in-Time-Teaching" (JiTT) strategy for classes of 40 students, he adapted the concept for his classes of 350 students in beginning science courses. Based on answers to Web-based questions he received from the students prior to class, he was able to fine-tune each lecture to better meet their needs.

Stanley H. Pierce Award
Samuel N. Kamin, professor of computer science, has a genuine interest in students – their development, their experiences and their opinions. He created a newsgroup that serves as a clearinghouse for questions and discussions and also headed the department’s Teaching Improvement Committee and was successful at motivating faculty members to attend improvement workshops. This award, named for a former associate dean of the college is presented to a faculty member and student who have "done the most to develop empathetic student-faculty cooperation."

Rose Award for Teaching Excellence
Scott Willenbrock, professor of physics, brings enduring values to teaching. His success as a teacher serves as a reminder that teaching is fundamentally a social relationship between instructors and students. The respect he holds for students is reflected in his efforts to learn and remember students’ names, even when dealing with more than 400 students. Intended to foster and reward excellence in undergraduate teaching, this award recognizes teachers who excel at motivating undergraduate students to learn and appreciate engineering.

BP Amoco Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Instruction
Gary Gladding, professor of physics, is concerned that some students become adept at doing calculations while failing to understand basic physical principles. Focusing on introductory physics courses, he created new instructional materials, called "interactive examples," that take advantage of feedback capabilities of the Web. More than 3,800 students have already benefited from this pioneering tool and it has the potential to improve the understanding of engineering students across the country. The BP Amoco Foundation, committed to promoting innovation in science and technology, provides an annual award for a faculty member who has introduced a particularly successful innovation into undergraduate instruction in the areas of chemical engineering, chemistry, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and electrical engineering (power and controls).