CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign reintroduced one of its signature faculty honors this spring with the University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Awards, which recognizes professors who take on sustained, active leadership in improving teaching and learning at Illinois.
University Distinguished Teacher-Scholars are celebrated for the ways their work improves the quality of teaching not just in their own classrooms, studios or labs, but across campus and disciplines, helping to shape a stronger learning environment for all.
The awards were presented to two faculty members — computer science professor Jeff Erickson and electrical and computer engineering professor Yuting Chen — during a ceremony hosted by the Office of the Provost on campus in March. Here are the descriptions of those recipients, as submitted by their nominators:
Erickson, the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor of Computer Science in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, received the Advanced Career Prize. This award recognizes a tenure-stream or specialized faculty member with seven or more years of experience at Illinois.
Since joining the university in 1998, Erickson has regularly taught courses in algorithms and theoretical computer science and is the architect of the program’s two largest theory courses. His guiding perspective on education is one of full transparency, to the benefit of his students as well as fledgling instructors and fellow faculty. Erickson maintains a public library of his algorithms course materials: well over a thousand pages of detailed lecture notes, exercises, a full suite of lab handouts, a thorough archive of all past homework and exams, and semesters’ worth of lecture videos. This open trove of resources reflects his view that designing algorithms is a vital skill to hone through an emphasis on practice and process, not the end result.
One of the theory courses under Erickson’s authorship, CS 374, is widely considered one of the most challenging undergraduate courses in the program. He took a leading role in the creation of this course over a decade ago to reflect changing trends in the field, melding together two separate courses into a single four-credit course that enrolls 1,400 students yearly. Despite both the size and purported difficulty of the class, Erickson meticulously supervises the course staff for each lab section and cares for the success of students, scheduling appointments with struggling students and expanding office hours. He also has overseen the development of the innovative “TheorieLearn” project of scaffolded, auto-graded exercises that further reinforces the problem-solving processes he advocates in his teaching. In the spirit of this inquiry, Erickson’s research focus has shifted away from theoretical computer science and toward computer science education to delve into how students truly learn the subject.
Chen, who also received her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Illinois, received the Early Career Prize. This award recognizes a tenure-system or specialized faculty member with four or more years of experience at Illinois and 15 years or less since conferral of a terminal degree.
Forging a meaningful and broad impact across The Grainger College of Engineering, Chen has deeply influenced both the learning experiences of the individual students in her classes and the pedagogical infrastructure across the college that extends beyond her classroom. She deploys various innovative instruction methods, including pre-annotated lecture slides, active learning activities and high-frequency, low-stakes assessments. Notably, Chen uses these methods in large introductory courses — she has taught close to 50% of the students enrolled in ECE 220 during the past four years, or approximately 1,200 students. With the variable-level learners that typically make up introductory courses, Chen has expertly balanced devoting support to struggling students while continuing to challenge and motivate the top-tier of students.
Her dedication to instruction also extends toward mentorship, curriculum development and training teaching assistants. In collaboration with several other faculty members, Chen played a central role in the creation of the ENG 580: Teaching and Leadership course that now serves as the de facto TA training class. It enrolls over 400 students each year and helps graduate students gain teaching competencies, classroom management skills and a broad understanding of engineering education. Beyond the classroom, Chen has showed a strong commitment to broadening participation in STEM through outreach and public engagement. She has organized and expanded summer programs for high school and middle school students and led community-based STEM initiatives, helping to inspire the next generation of engineers while strengthening connections between the university and local communities. On top of all these duties and accomplishments, Chen has demonstrated further leadership as director of the Graduate Studies Division in the American Society for Engineering Education since 2020.
Distinguished Teacher Scholar prize recipients achieve that title permanently throughout their appointment at Illinois and become members of the University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Academy, in which members contribute to discussions on the university’s instructional mission, goals and policies, offering valuable perspectives to the provost as needed.
