Nancy L.
Klein
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Year Awarded: 2015
Nancy Louise Klein is associate professor in the Department of Architecture. She earned her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College and taught at Indiana University and the University of Missouri at Columbia before joining the faculty of the College of Architecture in 2006. Dr. Klein’s courses in architectural history change the way students see the world, introducing them to cultural context, design, and technology in a global setting. Her nominators say she is truly an outstanding teacher, who draws on her passion, knowledge, and expertise, providing students with tools for building knowledge while seeking a deeper understanding of the world. Despite teaching large lecture classes, she is able to engage her students in reading and understanding the language of architecture. And, she consistently receives high marks on her student evaluations (4.7 or better out of 5), which is particularly notable considering the rigor of her courses and the number of large section courses she teaches. One of her former students writes, “Her passion inspired me to continue learning about how architecture can shape the human experience…. Every class lecture is another adventure into the ancient world.” A former graduate student says Dr. Klein “helped us to find ways to relate the history of thousands of years ago to current events, and more personally to our own interests and current architectural design projects.” Her colleagues in the College of Architecture also hold Dr. Klein in high esteem, both as a scholar and as a teacher with an extraordinary reputation in the classroom, commenting that her advanced undergraduate classes and graduate seminars allow students to develop skill sets that are essential for any career, such as the ability to communicate effectively in writing and speech and to always have a critical approach to knowledge.
College: College of Architecture
Award Level: Teaching
Danny
Klinefelter
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Year Awarded: 1998
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Extension/ Continuing Education
Edmund
Klipple
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Year Awarded: 1968
College: Science
Award Level: Teaching
Stephanie
Knight
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Year Awarded: 1998
College: Education and Human Development
Award Level: Teaching
Dale
Knobel
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Year Awarded: 1994
College: Honors Program
Award Level: Student Relations
Donald
Knutson
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Year Awarded: 1984
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Extension/ Continuing Education
Ronald
Knutson
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Year Awarded: 1998
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Teaching
Olga
Kocharovskaya
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Year Awarded: 2005
College: Science
Award Level: Research
Wulf
Koepke
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Year Awarded: 1978
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Wulf
Koepke
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Year Awarded: 1992
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Research
John
Koldus III
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Year Awarded: 1986
College: Student Services
Award Level: Student Relations
Lloyd
Korhonen
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Year Awarded: 2000
College: Education and Human Development
Award Level: Extension/ Continuing Education
Xenophon
Koufteros
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Year Awarded: 2018
Dr. Xenophon Koufteros earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bowling Green State University and a doctorate from The University of Toledo. He joined the faculty of Mays Business School in 2007 after serving on the faculties of The University of Texas at El Paso and Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Koufteros has taught a variety of courses at the bachelor’s, master’s, executive master’s (average student age is 40), and doctoral levels, as well as in the Center for Executive Development which focuses on non-degree teaching. His signature class is Supply Chain: Sourcing and Procurement, the focus of his academic research and a class that did not exist at Texas A&M before his arrival. For this class, he has created two case studies with different firms to give students the opportunity to solve real-world problems and then present their solutions to executives of the firms depicted in the cases. He believes that involvement with the corporate community is good for both his students and the school. Beyond the cases, his course materials show the care he takes in ensuring student learning. Far from teaching to an empty room, enrollment for his elective classes typically are at capacity and he has successfully taught core business courses with class sizes of more than 100. Dr. Koufteros has justly earned several teaching awards, including The Association of Former Students College-Level Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching and The Association’s University-Level Distinguished Achievement Award in Individual Student Relationships. Among student-voted teaching awards at Mays, Dr. Koufteros has won in all the categories for which he was eligible in both 2016 and 2017. In addition, he is highly esteemed for his teaching by his peers.
College: Department of Information & Operations Management
Award Level: Teaching
Xenophon
Koufteros
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Year Awarded: 2013
Xenophon Koufteros earned his B.S.B.A .and M.B.A. from Bowling Green State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Toledo. He joined the faculty of Mays Business School in 2007. He is the recipient of numerous teaching and research awards, and is a highly active scholar. He is credited with nearly single-handedly building the Supply Chain Management (SCM) undergraduate major at Texas A&M. Through his devotion to students he has increased the number of majors from 17 when arrived to 280 today.
His nominator says, “It is no exaggeration to state that Xen was the architect for the effort to build the SCM program.” He created and headed up the SCM student group. He visited classrooms to advertise the major and explain what it was. He stayed late for company presentations and tirelessly met with scores of company representatives during the day and evening, and personally advised more than 300 students over the past five years. He also started the “resume book” to provide employers an easier way to find interested SCM students. “He has provided an enormous quantity of high quality effective service to the students of Texas A&M.”
A recruiter says, “There is not another professor I would choose to teach, coach, and mentor my own daughters.” A former student writes, “I still keep in contact with Dr. Koufteros to update him on how my job is going. . . . His interest in our lives is something that not every student is fortunate to receive.” Another former student concludes, “Dr. Koufteros . . . is a motivator and the type of teacher who gives his utmost effort every day to positively impact the future of each student. . . . I truly believe he embodies everything that this award stands for.”
College: Department of Information and Operations Management
Award Level: Individual Student Relations
Yvonne J.
Kovar
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Year Awarded: 2004
College: Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Science
Award Level: Staff
Thomas
Kozik
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Year Awarded: 1997
College: Engineering
Award Level: Teaching
Arnold
Krammer
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Year Awarded: 1989
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Arnold
Krammer
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Year Awarded: 2000
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Bert
Kretzschmar
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Year Awarded: 1994
College: University Police
Award Level: Staff
Harry
Kroiter
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Year Awarded: 1976
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Subodha
Kumar
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Year Awarded: 2016
Subodha Kumar, associate professor in the Department of Information and Operations Management, joined the faculty of the Mays Business School in 2009 after earning his PhD. from the University of Texas at Dallas. In his six years here, he has received three different teaching awards—the Montague-CTE Scholar Award, The Association of Former Students College-Level Award for Teaching, and the student-voted Teaching Excellence Award. His department head wrote that Dr. Kumar excels in all dimensions: excellent in research, excellent as a colleague, and excellent in teaching. In the past few years Dr. Kumar has taught the undergraduate Business Statistics core course, including the honors sections, and the MBA core course for Quantitative Methods. For both, his average course evaluation is 4.84 of a possible 5. Colleagues say the undergraduate statistics course can be difficult to teach because the students’ incoming level of knowledge and mathematical ability can vary widely. It is often a class that is loathed by students, regardless of the quality of the instructor. But, Dr. Kumar clearly has reversed that trend. He is innovative in the classroom and goes beyond the basic responsibility of teaching facts and formulas, providing a very comfortable leaning environment and exposing students to how statistics are used in the real world. One of his students said, “Prof. Kumar was awesome!! I don’t ever think I had a teacher that cared so much about his students.” Another commented, “I despise math, but INFO 303 has been my favorite math course. I think it helps that the material is presented in business terms & related to business applications.” An MBA student wrote, “He is essential in the MBA setting in my opinion.” And another MBA student put it succinctly, writing, “Just one word. Outstanding.”
College: Mays Business School
Award Level: Teaching
Yue
Kuo
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Year Awarded: 2012
Yue Kuo joined the faculty of the Department of Chemical Engineering in the Dwight Look College of Engineering in 1998. He is the Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and holds joint appointments in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. Dr. Kuo earned a doctorate in engineering science from Columbia University in 1979. Before coming to Texas A&M he served in industry for nearly 20 years.
Dr. Kuo's research concentrates on nano and microelectronics with special interests in semiconductor materials, processes, and devices as well as thin films and plasma technology. In his thin film nano and microelectronics research laboratory, he develops new materials, novel processes, and advanced devices with the ultimate goal of creating high-performance, highly reliable, manufacturable devices for current and future applications. The results of his research are published in technical papers, proceedings, and patents. Many of his publications are credited as being among the most downloaded, editor selected, poster awarded, or news media quoted papers. His technical contributions have been recognized with numerous awards and honors, such as the Electrochemical Society’s Electronics and Photonics Division award and IBM awards. He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society and the IEEE Electron Devices Society.
As a leader in the worldwide thin film transistor and related solid-state community, Dr. Kuo has been very active in the Electrochemical Society and other professional organizations for 25 years. In addition he has been involved in organizing or chairing 70 international conferences. He is a much sought after speaker who has delivered nearly 130 keynote, plenary, and invited speeches to audiences at international conferences, universities and research and development centers around the world.
College: Engineering
Award Level: Research
Linda
Lacey
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Year Awarded: 2005
College: Academic Affairs
Award Level: Staff
Charles W.
Lafon
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Year Awarded: 2008
Charles Lafon joined the faculty of Texas A&M in 2000 after earning his Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee. He was named a Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar in 2004–05, and he received The Association of Former Students College-Level Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching, in 2006. He teaches an introductory course in physical geography; upper-level undergraduate courses in regional climatology, biogeography, and field geography; and a graduate course in biogeography. To promote his students’ academic and professional development and to stimulate their enthusiasm for geography, Dr. Lafon has designed a number of field, laboratory, and computer-based assignments, one of which led to a publication in a top geographic education journal.
Dr. Lafon serves as the Undergraduate Director and chair of the Undergraduate Committee in the Department of Geography. Currently he is leading the department’s efforts to revise and improve its undergraduate program.
Dr. Lafon has taken numerous graduate and undergraduate students with him on field research expeditions to the Appalachian Mountains, northern Sweden, and East Texas. He enjoys fieldwork and can think of no better way for students to learn and become excited about geography than to participate in field research activities. He also works closely with students to help them publish their research.
College: Geosciences
Award Level: Teaching
Dimitris
Lagoudas
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Year Awarded: 2014
Dimitris C. Lagoudas is a University Distinguished Professor and the inaugural recipient of the John and Bea Slattery Chair in Aerospace Engineering. He serves as associate vice chancellor for engineering research for The Texas A&M University System, senior associate dean for research in the Dwight Look College of Engineering and deputy director of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), and the director of the Texas Institute for Intelligent Materials and Structures. He received his Ph.D. from Lehigh University. Dr. Lagoudas joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1992. His research involves the design, characterization and modeling of multifunctional material systems at nano, micro, and macro levels. His research team is one of the most recognized internationally in the area of modeling and characterization of shape memory alloys (materials that undergo a reversible thermo-mechanical phase transition so they “remember” their shapes) that are giving rise to applications in the aerospace, automotive, and medical areas.
Dr. Lagoudas has co-authored more than 400 scientific publications with 165 in archival journals. He has also co-authored a textbook with his graduate students. He is a TEES fellow, a Texas A&M University Faculty Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Institute of Physics. In addition, he has received numerous other significant awards.
A colleague at another university commented that the impact Dr. Lagoudas “has had on the aerospace profession and industry is profound.” The smart memory alloys framework his team developed has been an enabling step toward integrating active materials into commercial and military aircraft for increased fuel economy, increased performance, and decreased noise. Another colleague adds, “For any significant recognition the requirements can be boiled down to two words: quality and impact. Professor Lagoudas’ contributions have these in abundance.”
College: College of Engineering
Award Level: Research
Glen
Laine
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Year Awarded: 1997
College: Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Science
Award Level: Research