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Excellence in Instruction: Faculty, advisers honored with 2023 campus awards

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Each year, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign presents Campus Awards for Excellence in Instruction to exceptional faculty and staff members, graduate teaching assistants and advisers from across campus. This year’s recipients are being honored at a ceremony this week. 

Awardees are recognized for sustained excellence and innovation in undergraduate and graduate teaching, undergraduate and graduate advising and mentoring, online teaching and research guidance. The Office of the Provost sponsors the annual awards.

Faculty, specialized faculty and teaching assistants are eligible for the Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. The honorees, along with descriptions provided by their nominators, include:

Headshot of Valeria Sobol

Valeria Sobol

Valeria Sobol, Slavic languages and literature, creates an open and inclusive atmosphere for discussion, where students feel welcome to contribute their own perspectives and particular knowledge and are challenged to think creatively and critically through innovative courses like Russ 461: Russia and the Other. Her teaching philosophy is based on the simple premise that students learn best through active engagement.

Headshot of Janice Harrington

Janice Harrington

Janice Harrington, English, is an invaluable member of the creative writing program. She has appeared on the list of Teachers Ranked as Excellent 12 times. Foregrounding her students’ needs in times of crisis comes easy to Harrington due to her student-centered approach to teaching. She adjusts her syllabuses in response to the students’ interests and concerns and believes that writing poetry can change students’ lives.

Headshot of Eugene Lerman

Eugene Lerman

Eugene Lerman, mathematics, is exceptional in his ability to break down rigorous mathematical arguments into simple questions and statements, making the math accessible and insightful. His excellence is not only purely technical in the sense of getting students to become fluent in some very difficult material, but it extends to the expansion of his students’ intellectual abilities in a more general sense. He has an approachable nature, willingness to entertain and expand on questions and a sense of humor that pervades his lecturing.

Headshot of Pascal Bellon

Pascal Bellon

Pascal Bellon, materials science and engineering, has been recognized on the list of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for MSE443: Design of Engineering Alloys in 10 of the last 11 years. Bellon is deeply invested in the quality and content of both his courses and the overall curriculum in the department. He cares about the success of the students in his classroom and is invested in ensuring that their experience is exceptional in all of the courses the department offers.

Headshot of Joshua Rovey

Joshua Rovey

Joshua Rovey, aerospace engineering, is prepared far in advance of each semester, is crystal clear about what he expects of students and meticulous about his presentation of material. His goal as a teacher is to provide every student in his class opportunities to learn how to apply math and science to analyze, study and solve engineering problems.

Headshot of Michael Hurley

Michael Hurley

Michael Hurley, English, teaches a range of courses with important and distinct functions that can really make a difference to students’ sense of satisfaction and self- worth. CW 243: The Craft Essay, for example, is notoriously hard to explain to students beforehand but Hurley renders it intelligible. There’s something in his teaching that engages students and transforms them because he has taught them how to write about significant things cleverly, passionately, and without embarrassment.

Headshot of Amanda Alt

Amanda Alt

Amanda Alt, accountancy, is a passionate and highly skilled tax educator. Her service commitment to campus spans more than nine years. Alt’s key contributions to her courses include designing new learning activities to maximize student engagement, stimulating active discussion in class and using a model of coaching and mentoring to inspire students toward mastery of technical and critical thinking skills in the area of taxation.  

Headshot of Toni Gist

Toni Gist

Toni Gist, food science and human nutrition, has ignited the department with her enthusiasm for teaching and compassion for students of all ages, resulting in many community engagement opportunities. She has taken every opportunity to make sure her educational materials are available and useful to a wide array of audiences. Recently, Gist received funding from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences to create TikTok videos to improve student recruitment, retention and engagement through social media.

Photo of Yuting Wu Chen

Yuting Wu Chen

Yuting Wu Chen, electrical and computer engineering, is described as compassionate, knowledgeable and inspiring. For students who have not programmed before, the material in courses like ECE 220 can seem daunting. However, Chen helps students use conceptual misunderstandings as learning opportunities to boost their confidence. In her classes, she drives the lecture forward by prompting students to answer questions, discuss solutions and piece together the answer.

Photo of Robert Kanter

Robert Kanter

Robert Kanter, School of Earth, Society and Environment, has been leading seminars, lectures, discussions and field trips with the School for over a decade. In the last five years of senior surveys, his courses have always been at the top of the list of “most important courses taken at Illinois.” No other instructor is so adept at integrating field trips, alumni visits and expert members of the community into the service of course learning goals.

Photo of Kristin Bail

Kristin Bail

Kristin Bail, political science, includes not only academic objectives in her learning objectives but also emotional learning such as building self-confidence, a sense of belonging and overall empowerment. Her greatest strength lies in her approach to course design and execution with a focus on first-generation students. While she designs her courses for these students, the resulting design serves the needs of all introductory-level students. She has brought enthusiasm, rigor and empathy to all the courses she has taught as a teaching assistant and as an independent instructor.

Headshot of Mina Nahvi

Mina Nahvi

Mina Nahvi, mathematics, is a brilliant scientist. During her five years of graduate school at Illinois, Nahvi also has distinguished herself as an extraordinary educator. She has excelled in classroom teaching at all levels and has taken on a wide range of mentoring and educational activities involving both students and other teachers. She cares deeply about her students as human beings, and her efforts in and out of the classroom have had a tremendous impact on the lives of her students during the difficult pandemic years.

Headshot of Marissa Chesser

Marissa Chesser

Marissa Chesser, mathematics, has proven to be an exceptional teacher of undergraduate mathematics. While she does all she can to help her students succeed in class, she also cares about their overall well-being. Chesser participates in activities outside the classroom such as being a mentor for the Merit and Illinois Geometry Lab programs, assisting with undergraduate mathematics advising and volunteering to lead activities for Girls Engaged in Math and Science.

Headshot of Sanchari Banerjee

Sanchari Banerjee

Sanchari Banerjee, educational psychology, took full leadership in designing the EPSY 405 personality and social development course, lecturing and fostering a warm classroom climate during the COVID-19 pandemic. She takes great care and detail in ensuring that students progress at a good pace in the course. Banerjee believes in a pedagogical approach that encourages students to own and take pride in their identity (including cultural, racial, sexual, caste, class and linguistic identities) and to question the academically and historically prevalent view of class topics.

Photo of Ana Garner

Ana Garner

Ana Garner, education policy, organization and leadership, has proven herself to be a valuable collaborator and skilled instructor. She demonstrates skills in developing innovative instructional ideas and building community with her students and among other teaching assistants. Her teaching philosophy embraces practices that increase equity and cultural competency by adopting collaborative learning methods in which students challenge themselves and each other to critically examine themselves, the material at hand and their place in the world.  

The Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching recognizes contributions to graduate or professional learning beyond classroom instruction. Tenure-system faculty and specialized faculty are eligible. Awardees and their contributions include:

Headshot of Anne Barger

Anne Barger

Anne Barger, veterinary clinical medicine, has contributed to veterinary professional student and graduate student instruction and mentorship through clinical engagement with students rotating through or working in the lab. Barger has taught principles of clinical pathology courses and now, as a tenured professor and department head, continues her commitment to teaching, engagement in the veterinary curriculum and support of graduate students. Barger is able to clearly articulate her thoughts to explain complicated concepts in a high-stress environment and do so in a manner that is engaging and collegial. 

Headshot of Ramavarapu Sreenivas

Ramavarapu Sreenivas

Ramavarapu Sreenivas, industrial and enterprise systems, has shown outstanding graduate and professional instruction over several years, exceptional mentoring of his graduate advisees, impact to the careers and lives of his students, leadership in the formulation of the M.S. in Financial Engineering program, and distinguished service as the ISE associate head for graduate programs. Professor Sreenivas is an exceptional instructor whose unique way of teaching draws the full attention of students and generates a deep interest in the subject. It is evident how knowledgeable and passionate he is in the way he lectures, promotes a discussion-based environment and explains the most complex topics with ease.

Caroline Tancredy, psychology, and Jeffery Mondak, political science, are recipients of the Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring, presented to tenure-system or specialized faculty members at Illinois who have taught on the Urbana-Champaign campus for at least five years. According to their nominators:

Headshot of Caroline Tancredy

Caroline Tancredy

Tancredy is the director of the Master of Science in Psychological Science program and was instrumental in crafting the program and ensuring its success. She has created a superb structure to support the professional development of MSPS students with a wide range of interests and backgrounds and she forges strong and supportive mentoring relationships with each student.

Headshot of Jeffery Mondak

Jeffery Mondak

Mondak developed several programs that strengthened how students are professionalized and prepared for the academic job market. Mondak has always validated non-academic career paths as well and has helped students prepare for data-analytics careers in particular. His excellence as a mentor begins by putting graduate students first. He mentors them from the moment they arrive, and often before that. He continues giving advice to his academic placements not only through the job market but at least until they achieve tenure.

The Campus Award for Excellence in Guiding Undergraduate Research is designed to foster and reward excellence in involving and guiding undergraduate students in scholarly research. Honorees, as described by their nominators, include:

Headshot of Alison Bell

Alison Bell

Alison Bell, evolution, ecology and behavior, has provided undergraduate research opportunities through multiple venues, including her lab, her teaching and her efforts involving research experiences for undergraduates grant. The grant provided stipends for nearly 200 undergraduates from community colleges to perform research in the summer at the U. of I. Bell has helped provide quality research opportunities to hundreds of undergraduates through the Bell Lab.

Headshot of Shannon Mejia

Shannon Mejia

Shannon Mejia, kinesiology and community health, is director of the Adult Development, Adaptation, and Technology Laboratory. During her five years as a tenure-track faculty member at Illinois, Mejía has demonstrated exemplary ability, success and productivity in guiding undergraduate students in research. During her tenure, she has mentored a diverse group of 36 undergraduate students from the fields of kinesiology, community health, i-health, informatics, statistics and business who share an interest in aging and the potential for technology to improve the lives of older adults.

Headshot of Andrea Faber-Taylor

Andrea Faber-Taylor

Andrea Faber-Taylor, crop sciences, is the recipient of the Campus Award for Excellence in Online and Distance Teaching, an award that recognizes contributions to student learning through innovative uses of technology. Faber-Taylor has distinguished her online and distance instruction efforts with her energetic, enthusiastic instructional style, passion and interest in the application of pedagogy to course design, sensitivity to her students’ needs and learning styles and strong commitment to excellence in learning. She invests a great deal of energy to ensure that her online students have as meaningful a lab experience as her in-person students. She uses instructional technology combined with creative uses of students’ local environments to enable her online students to participate in rigorous lab exercises.

The Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising recognizes advisers’ impact on undergraduate students and their intellectual development through academic advising relationships. Honorees include:

Headshot of Stephanie Ott-Monsivais

Stephanie Ott-Monsivais

Stephanie Ott-Monsivais, mechanical science and engineering, is an academic adviser for students in two undergraduate programs (engineering mechanics and mechanical engineering). Typically, Ott-Monsivais is assigned 60-80 advisees each semester, with many more student interactions based on walk-in and follow-up contacts. She works to ensure that each of her students receives an individualized advising experience. She is one of five departmental academic advisors developing and leading the inaugural year of the Leadership and Excellence in Engineering Pathways program.

Headshot of Justine Karduck

Justine Karduck

Justine Karduck, food science and human nutrition, directs Illinois’ top-ranked accredited Didactic Program in Dietetics. Mentorship of students is her passion; this includes getting to know each of her students on a personal level. She is sensitive to their individual needs and concerns while making sure they are on the path to independence. Karduck has created the courses she teaches to all of her dietetic students that span the entire four years. As a result, she has been able to guide her students through all of the challenges they face.

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