President’s Teaching Excellence Awards
The President’s Teaching Excellence Award committee receives hundreds of nominations every year and considers a broad spectrum of eligible candidates throughout the University. The award comes with a stipend and recipients were presented with medallions at the annual Honors Convocation ceremony in May.
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction
For tenure-system (those with tenure or those eligible for tenure) faculty members, this award recognizes sustained excellence in undergraduate instruction, including innovation in approaches to teaching and the overall impact on student learning. To be eligible, faculty members must have taught on the UTD campus for a minimum of five years and have not won this award in the previous 10 years. Winners of the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award (ROTA) in the previous 10 years are not eligible.
For non-tenure-system faculty members, this award recognizes sustained excellence in undergraduate instruction, including innovation in approaches to teaching and the overall impact on student learning. To be eligible, faculty members must have taught on the UTD campus for a minimum of three years and have not won this award in the previous 10 years. Winners of the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award (ROTA) in the previous 10 years are not eligible.
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
This award recognizes exceptional instructional performance by a graduate teaching assistant. To be eligible, graduate students must have served as a teaching assistant for a minimum of two semesters on the UTD campus.
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Graduate/Professional Instruction
This award recognizes sustained excellence in graduate or professional program instruction, including innovation in approaches to teaching and the overall impact on student learning. To be eligible, faculty members must have taught on the UTD campus for a minimum of five years (including at least one graduate or professional course for four semesters) and have not won this award in the previous 10 years.
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Online/Blended Instruction
This award recognizes excellence in the design and delivery of courses in online or blended formats, including innovation in course development, effective use of technology and media, and overall positive impact on student learning. To be eligible, faculty members must have taught at least three courses in an online (course delivered 85-100% online) or blended (course delivered 50-84% online) format in the last three years and have not won this award in the previous 10 years.
President’s Teaching Excellence Awards of 2023
Dr. Bing Lv
President’s Teaching Excellence Award Undergraduate Instruction (Tenure-system faculty)
Dr. Lv is an associate professor in the Department of Physics. Besides normal classroom teaching, he loves to get involved in undergraduate research programs, where he can train and inspire Comet undergraduates to enrich their scientific research skills and foster their academic and research excellence. He received an NSM Teaching Award in 2019. He has active research programs including experimental quantum materials, high thermal conducting and new 2D semiconductors and dielectric materials.
Dr. Tariq Ali
President’s Teaching Excellence Award Undergraduate Instruction (Non-tenure-system)
Dr. Ali is an associate professor of instruction in the Department of Bioengineering. He played a key role in designing electronics and bio-instrumentation courses in the newly formed department. He is an enthusiastic and innovative educator who has designed and taught some high-impact electronics theory and laboratory courses to help students reach their engineering design potential in a short amount of time. He has won several department and school-level teaching awards, and a CTL Instructional Improvement Award.
Dr. Meghna Sabharwal
President’s Teaching Excellence Award Graduate/Professional Instruction
Dr. Sabharwal is a professor in the public and nonprofit management program where she teaches graduate courses in public management, public human resources management, organizational theory and nondiscrimination. She has also been a committee member for 46 doctoral dissertations, with 19 of them being chaired or co-chaired by her. She was recognized with the Outstanding Community Outreach and Engagement Award in 2022. In 2016 she received the Inclusive Excellence and Intercultural Engagement Teaching Award sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Community Engagement at UT Dallas.
Dr. Dohyeong Kim
President’s Teaching Excellence Award Online/Blended Instruction
Dr. Dohyeong is a Professor of Public Policy and Geospatial Information Sciences, currently serving as the Associate Dean of Graduate Education in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. He has been instrumental in securing multi-million-dollar research grants from prestigious organizations like the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institute of Health, the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, and various funding agencies overseas. Dohyeong’s research expertise spans a wide range of interdisciplinary public policy and planning aspects, with a particular focus on health and environmental policy analysis.
Nan Clement
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
Nan Clement is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics. She has served as a TA for more than ten classes, ranging from introductory to Ph.D. level courses in various modalities since joining UT Dallas in 2019. Furthermore, she was the instructor of record for the undergraduate major core, Intermediate Microeconomic Theory, from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022. Nan has also actively participated in services such as Assessment Days, various student advisory councils, and TA orientations. In addition to her teaching activities, she is currently working on research projects in the economics of digitization, with a focus on cybersecurity and privacy.
Past Recipients
2022
Dr. John Zweck
President’s Teaching Excellence Award Undergraduate Instruction (Tenure-system faculty)
Zweck is a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. He coordinates a multivariable calculus course for science and engineering students. As a Ph.D. student at Rice University (1988-1993), he learned how to teach multivariable calculus by helping students as they grappled with homework sets during late-night sessions in the college dining halls. Since joining UT Dallas in 2012, he has collaborated with fellow instructors, graduate teaching assistants, and undergraduate learning assistants to develop a small-group active-learning method in the weekly problem sessions. His research and teaching innovations have been supported by several awards from the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Salena Brody
President’s Teaching Excellence Award Undergraduate Instruction (Non-tenure-system)
Brody is a professor of instruction in psychology and CTL assistant director. She is an enthusiastic teacher, public speaker, and trainer whose awards include the Aage Møller Teaching Excellence Award, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Innovative (SPSSI) Teaching Award, the SPSSI Teaching Resources Award, the UT Dallas Women Leading in Diversity Award, and the Collin College Outstanding Professor of the Year Award. Her expertise as an equity scholar-practitioner most recently was featured in the 2021 American Psychological Association book “Navigating Difficult Moments in Teaching Diversity and Social Justice.” Her courses address themes of representation, social issues, and social change. She is passionate about inspiring students to use psychological knowledge for the public good.
Dr. Shalini Prasad
President’s Teaching Excellence Award Graduate/Professional Instruction
Prasad is a professor and head of the Department of Bioengineering and Cecil H and Ida A. Green Professor of Systems Biology Science. She has graduated 13 Ph.D. students and 38 master’s students as a primary supervising professor. Her graduate and undergraduate advisees have given over 200 presentations at scientific conferences and have won 113 awards at international and national scientific conferences. She was awarded the ASM-IIM lectureship in 2012. In 2021, she received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to higher education and healthcare engineering.
Dr. Carie S. Tucker King
President’s Teaching Excellence Award Online/Blended Instruction
King joined the faculty at UT Dallas in 2008. She has taught in six schools, including courses on scientific publication, Japanese communication, research methods, professional communication, ethics, media theory, and rhetoric. She teaches in-person, hybrid, and asynchronous courses — as long as she is working with students, she is content. She is passionate about integrity, research, and collaboration. She serves on several committees and advises the communication and English honors societies. She is also the new managing editor of Sigma Tau Delta’s two international literary journals.
Siri Wilder
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
Siri Wilder is a teaching assistant and PhD student in the Department of Psychology working in Dr. Karen Prager’s Couples’ Daily Lives Lab. Her research focuses on maintaining healthy relationships and the after-effects of relational damage.
2021
Dr. Jeremiah J. Gassensmith
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (tenure-track)
After his PhD., he traveled to Northwestern University to learn under Professor Sir J. Fraser Stoddart. At Northwestern, he investigated a diverse array of topics, including gas sequestration by cyclodextrin-based metal-organic frameworks. He joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Dallas in August 2013. In 2015 he was awarded the School of Natural Science and Mathematics’ highest teaching award, in 2016 he was awarded a new doctoral investigator award by the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund, and in 2017 he was awarded an NSF CAREER award and in 2021 he was awarded the President’s Excellence Award for undergraduate instruction.
Mary Beth Goodrich
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (non-tenure-track)
She has been teaching various courses in accounting since 2001. Although the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult, she admired how the professors, eLearning, OIT, and other areas of the university came together to learn new tools and techniques to deliver courses to students in a variety of modalities including in-person, virtually, and asynchronously. She loves to challenge students to become their best selves and find their niche in the wide variety of positions accounting offers. Using creative ways to teach accounting concepts and looking at how technology will impact the accounting profession in the future are two of her favorite aspects of teaching, but the end goal is always the same: student success is her ultimate “paycheck.”
Dr. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Graduate/Professional Instruction
Dr. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki is a professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Throughout his career at UTD, Ishak-Boushaki has earned other teaching accolades, including a President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Graduate/Professional Instruction, and has been recognized for his research, including election as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and as a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Dr. Dani Fadda
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Online/Blended Instruction
Dr. Dani Fadda is an Associate Professor of Practice in Mechanical Engineering. His background includes two decades of engineering practice in the energy industry where he has held numerous positions. Dr. Fadda has worked in product research and developed patented products for chemical, petrochemical, and nuclear applications. He is an ASME Fellow and a Professional Engineer.
Kristina Kirk
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
Kriss is a PhD candidate in the Arts and Humanities department at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she works as a rhetoric instructor and managing editor for Reunion: The Dallas Review. She holds bachelor’s degrees in sociology and English from Middle Tennessee State University and a master’s degree in literature from Belmont University. Exploring the interplay between sociology and English is a central passion, as she seeks to integrate the popular with the academic. Her current work aims to demonstrate how popular culture, particularly rap and hip-hop culture, can increase student attentiveness in the writing classroom.
2020
Dr. Pamela Gossin
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (tenure-track)
Dr. Pamela Gossin is a professor of history of science and literary studies and the founder and Director of UT Dallas’ program in Medical and Scientific Humanities (MaSH). Dr Gossin studies the interdisciplinary interrelations of literature, history and science, especially astronomy and cosmology, from the ancient world, through the Scientific Revolution to the present. She holds national office as the Delegate for Science and Literature in the Modern Language Association and holds or has held various executive committee appointments in the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts and the History of Science Society.
Semiramis Amirpour
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (non-tenure-track)
Semiramis Amirpour is a senior lecturer of Marketing and Professional Sales at the Naveen Jindal School of Management. She is a recipient of UT Dallas President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction, and a recipient of the UT Dallas JSOM Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award. She was also named as “The Coach of Champions” at the International Collegiate Sales Competition after the UT Dallas team won the Collegiate World Cup of Sales in 2019.
Dr. Kim Knight
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Graduate/Professional Instruction
Dr. Kim Knight is the associate dean of graduate studies and an associate professor of arts, technology, and emerging communication. Dr. Knight is a digital media scholar whose research encompasses the fields of media, literary, cultural, and film studies, exploring the ways digital culture affects negotiations of power and the formation of identity. Relationships between media, technologies, and subjects, how they interact in “real life” and in the manner in which cultural texts represent them, are of special interest to her. Dr. Knight teaches courses in digital media theory, the shift from analog to digital textuality, viral media, wearable technology, and race, class, gender, and sexuality in digital environments, utilizing both theory and practice methodologies.
Karen Baynham
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Online/Blended Instruction
Karen Baynham is a Senior Lecturer in Communication and the Basic Course Director (BCD) in the UT Dallas School of Arts and Humanities. She is responsible for co-developing the core required course COMM 1311—Survey of Oral and Technology-based Communication. In co-managing the program, she works to identify and hire top talent for both full- and part-time faculty positions, organize and facilitate technology training for all COMM 1311 instructors, and provides classroom observations and faculty evaluations. As the BCD, she maintains the daily operations of running the program, which has increased to 95 sections and 24 faculty members. Along with the COMM 1311 faculty, she promotes and facilitates identifying and sharing Best Practices for teaching the basic course to make improvements each semester.
Katie Austin
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
Katie Austin is a teaching assistant and psychological sciences doctoral student in the School of Brain and Behavioral Sciences.
2019
Danieli Rodrigues
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (tenure-track)
Danieli Rodrigues received her BS Degree in Chemical Engineering from Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Brazil in 2005. She then joined the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering at Syracuse University, Syracuse – NY, receiving her MS in 2007 and PhD in 2010. Her graduate research focused on orthopedic biomaterials, primarily working on the characterization of corrosion and failure mechanisms of hip implants and development of acrylic two-solution bone cements for treatment of spinal compression fractures. Dr. Rodrigues joined the Department of Bioengineering at UT Dallas as an assistant professor in the Fall 2012.
Dr. Joanna Gentsch
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (non-tenure-track)
Joanna Gentsch is the Director of Student Programming and Community Engagement in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. She is a Developmental Psychologist and received both her PhD and Master’s Degree from UT Dallas. Dr. Gentsch is a member of the SACS COC Executive Leadership team and has administrative experience at both the school and university level. She recently received a Quantum Leap grant to expand experiential learning opportunities through Community-based learning and the creation of innovative student programming focused on social and academic belonging. Dr. Gentsch also enjoys teaching undergraduates in the school of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and through the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College.
Dr. Mary L. Urquhart
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Graduate/Professional Instruction
Dr. Urquhart’s formal training is as a planetary scientist with a specialization in the constraints on thermophysical properties of rocky and icy planetary crustal materials derived from temperature variations. Her work includes preK-12 curriculum development, design and delivery of professional development for in-service teachers, working directly with preK-12 students in and outside of classrooms, and education research with emphases in the design of effective professional development for teachers and in the development of science concepts and attitudes in learners of all ages. Dr. Urquhart is also keenly interested in working with policymakers in education from early childhood through graduate school, especially with regard to teacher training and curriculum design.
Dr. Abhijit Biswas
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Online/Blended Instruction
Dr. Abhijit Biswas has a diverse background delivering numerous marketing management courses for MBA and EMBA programs for more than 20 years at Purdue University, Southern Methodist University, and UT Dallas. He teaches a wide spectrum of Marketing courses like Principles of Marketing, Advertising and Promotions Management, Consumer Behavior and Brand Management. He has also developed and taught the Capstone Marketing Strategy course, Pricing Management, Marketing Research, Product Management and International Marketing.
Dr. Julie Parsons
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
Dr. Julie Parsons has served in a teaching role at UT Dallas for five years. She has been a teaching assistant for 12 courses, and she has taught two of her own courses.
2018
Dr. Jonas Bunte
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (tenure-track)
Dr. Jonas Bunte is an assistant professor of public economy in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. Teaching at UT Dallas since 2013, he studies the politics of finance. His classes explore how politics shapes economics and vice versa. He said his courses aim to provide students with the tools to think critically in an increasingly complex world.
Dr. Amandeep Sra
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (non-tenure-track)
Dr. Amandeep Sra is a senior lecturer in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. She began her teaching career at UT Dallas in 2011. She instructs sophomore and freshman courses and laboratories. She also serves as the general chemistry lab coordinator, faculty liaison for the Student Success Center and a summer camp facilitator.
Dr. Robert Ackerman
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Graduate/Professional Instruction
Dr. Robert Ackerman is an associate professor of psychology in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He arrived at UT Dallas in 2011 and has taught graduate-level and undergraduate courses on topics such as personality, statistics, and research design and analysis. He said he enjoys watching students’ interest come alive with new insights into statistics and data analysis.
Dr. Carol Cirulli Lanham
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Online/Blended Instruction
Senior lecturer Carol Cirulli Lanham MS’09, PhD’11 has been teaching at UT Dallas since 2011. She teaches a variety of sociology classes online and in the classroom. As assistant dean in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, she also teaches the freshman seminar.
Ariel Arguelles
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
Graduate student Ariel Arguelles teaches both Human Resources Management and Diversity in the Public Sector in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. She has been teaching at UT Dallas since spring 2017. She said her favorite part of teaching has been interacting with students and continuously challenging them in their ideas and beliefs.
2017
Dr. Gregg Dieckmann
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (tenure-track)
In addition to this year’s President’s Award, Dr. Gregg Dieckmann, associate professor of chemistry, has twice won Outstanding Teacher Awards from the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. A faculty member since 1999, he has taught inorganic chemistry, physical biochemistry and general chemistry, a course he has coordinated since 2006.
Dr. Sabrina Starnaman
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Undergraduate Instruction (non-tenure-track)
Dr. Sabrina Starnaman, clinical assistant professor in the School of Arts and Humanities, began teaching at UT Dallas in 2011. She has taught an array of literary studies courses, including The Literature of Fantasy, The Literature of Science Fiction and Studies in Women’s Literature.
Dr. Ravi Prakash
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Graduate/Professional Instruction
Dr. Ravi Prakash, a professor of computer science, has taught undergrads and graduate students for nearly 20 years in the Department of Computer Science and the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College.
Kathy Zolton
President’s Teaching Excellence Award in Online/Blended Instruction
Senior lecturer of accounting Kathy Zolton has been at the Naveen Jindal School of Management for five years. Her primary course is Advanced Financial Reporting. Zolton said the key to online courses and asynchronous learning is to help the students feel that they are all together on the same path at around the same time.
Sharron Conrad
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
Sharron Conrad has worked as a teaching assistant at UT Dallas since fall 2014 teaching rhetoric in the School of Arts and Humanities. She credits her successes in the classroom to her experience in her previous career working with students in art and history museums.
2016
Dr. Denise Paquette Boots
President’s Teaching Excellence Award (tenure-track)
Boots, who joined UT Dallas in 2006, teaches Introduction to Crime and Criminology and courses on topics including family violence, victimology, homicide and capital punishment. In 2009, she received a UT Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award. Students who nominated Boots praised her passion for teaching and her efforts to help students succeed, even long after they finish her courses.
Dr. Jigarkumar Patel
President’s Teaching Excellence Award (non-tenure-track)
Patel earned both a master’s degree and PhD in applied mathematics from UT Dallas. He also received bachelor’s degrees in pure mathematics and education, and a master’s degree in pure mathematics from Gujarat University in India. Patel has been a senior lecturer since 2011 and is course coordinator for Applied Calculus II. In comments in Patel’s nomination materials, students praised him for the clarity of his lectures, his enthusiasm for his subject and his willingness to work one on one with students outside of class.
Dr. Ryan McMahan
Provost’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentoring
Dr. Ryan McMahan is an assistant professor in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication. Since joining UT Dallas in 2012, McMahan has mentored 25 graduate, 15 undergraduate and six summer high school students conducting research in his Future Immersive Virtual Environments (FIVE) Lab. He also promotes research for underrepresented groups, including the establishment of a research summer camp for underrepresented high school students.
Emily Herzig
President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Assistants
Herzig was named one of the department’s first teaching associates, and has been the instructor of record for precalculus and applied calculus courses since 2014. Herzig said her approach to teaching draws on her enjoyment of the logical, problem-solving aspects of math.