Professor Steven Manly Named Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor in the College of Arts and Science.
Steven L. Manly , Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, has been named as the Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor in the College of Arts and Science for a period of three years starting July 1, 2002. Manly's appointment was approved by the Board of Trusties on March 21, 2002.
The Department of Physics and Astronomy will be hosting a reception in celebration of this award to Prof. Manly at 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday, March 27, 2002 in room B&L 271.
The award of the Brugler Chair is in recognition of Prof. Manly's contributions to the introductory physics course sequence, and is in support of his efforts to revitalize and modernize the introductory physics curriculum for science and engineering majors. As part of his program to improve teaching Manly has been running an Informal Workshop Taskforce at the University of Rochester.
The Brugler Chair is awarded to distinguished faculty who have demonstrated a strong commitment to excellence in teaching. According Dean Green's letter soliciting nominations, appointees "will be expected to plan for students a program of instruction that will expand the normal bounds of his or her expertise in subject matter and that will incorporate work in other domains of study within or outside of the faculty member's own discipline."
Past holders of the Brugler Chair have included Professors Theodore Brown, History 1979-82; Russell Peck, English, 1982-85; Thomas Krugh, Chemistry, 1985-88; Robert Blake, Foreign Language, 1988-9l; Robert Holmes, Philosophy, 1994-97; and Kathleen Parthe, Modern Languages, 1998-01.
Professor Manly joins a long list of department faculty who have won university wide teaching awards. These include Professor Emil Wolf who has recently won the University Graduate Teaching Award in (2000) ; Professors Orr (1999) , Wolfs (1995) and Das ( 1991) who received Edward Peck Curtis Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching; and Professors Eberly (2000) and Wolfs (1997) who were awarded University Goergen awards for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching . In addition, Auchincloss, Bodek, Orr and Jones won a Goergen Award for Distinguished Contribution to Undergraduate Learning (for the Women in Science and Engineering Program in 1998 ), Professor Slattery won a Goergen Award for Distinguished Contribution to Undergraduate Learning (for work of the College Curriculum Committee in 1997 ), and Professor Tipton won an honorable mention citation by students as Teacher of the Year at the University of Rochester.
Finally, Graduate students in Department of Physics and Astronomy also have a long history of receiving the
University's Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student. Recent Physics and Astronomy winners include Rohit Bhatia in 1996, Mishkat Bhattacharya in
1997, Ben Weiss in 1998, Jane Wesley in 2000, and most recently Kevin Wright in 2001 and Mark Houk in
2002
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(solicitation letter from Dean William Green)
DATE: August 15, 2001
TO: Department Chairs The College
FROM: Wm Scott Green Dean of the College
I write to ask you to nominate a member of your department for consideration as the next Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor in the College of Arts and Science.
The Chair is awarded for a three-year period and carries a supplement to the academic year salary as well as an annual expense fund. In addition to having demonstrated excellence in teaching, the appointee "will be expected to plan for students a program of instruction that will expand the normal bounds of his or her expertise in subject matter and that will incorporate work in other domains of study within or outside of the faculty member's own discipline."
The specification of the terms of the Chair continues: The Professorship will encourage faculty members, including junior members on occasion, to think beyond their own disciplinary limitations as they consider the ways of educating young persons. Much of the undergraduate program is limited to the teaching by specialists of their specialties, usually not in as narrow a way as that description might sound, but nonetheless within the confines of a single discipline. Yet, large numbers of faculty members draw intellectual nourishment from interchange with colleagues in other departments. Students should become aware of interchange and understand that chemists are not merely chemists, philosophers are not merely philosophers, historians are not merely historians, but that each of them uses some aspect of the other disciplines in resolving some of the difficult issues of the times. When members of different departments get together they frequently are able to launch programs that make the domains of ignorance shrink and promote better understanding of the limitations of individual approaches to the solution of problems. This is the aspect of undergraduate education which is neglected. Only a handful of faculty members are willing to take the time or to run the risks associated with investing time in order to develop imaginative programs that provide this revelation of the interchange of domains of knowledge."
It is clear from this text that the Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professorship is intended to encourage our best teachers to turn their attention to the invention of new interdisciplinary ways of teaching and learning. Nominations, therefore, should present evidence that the candidate has been an inventive, accomplished teacher and a proposal for a project to be pursued during the Brugler Professorship. Please submit your nominations by November 1.
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Article submitted by:
Arie Bodek
3/22/02; 9:45:02 AM