Anthony
Stranges
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Year Awarded: 1988
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Robert
Strawser
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Year Awarded: 1985
College: Business
Award Level: Research
Richard L.
Street, Jr.
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Year Awarded: 2010
College: College of Liberal Arts
Award Level: Research
James
Stricklin
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Year Awarded: 1971
College: Engineering
Award Level: Research
Bjarne
Stroustrup
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Year Awarded: 2009
College: Dwight Look College of Engineering
Award Level: Research
Camilla
Sturdivant '85
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Year Awarded: 2016
Camilla “Camy” Sturdivant is the associate director of the Department of Biology’s Lower Division Instruction Program (BLDP). She joined the Texas A&M staff in 1989 and the Department of Biology in 2005. She earned a B.S. in animal science from Texas A&M University. As associate director of the BLDP, she has primary responsibility for all aspects of the direct administration, coordination, and functioning of the five different 100-level and two 200-level biology courses. She directly supervises the BLDP technical and office staff and has administrative responsibility for more than 100 teaching staff, ranging from teaching assistants to full professors. The expectations of the associate director cover every aspect of a laboratory science teaching program that accommodates more than 5,000 students per year. Her nominators—the officers of the College of Science Dean’s Student Advisory Panel—wrote that no one epitomizes Texas A&M’s core values more than Ms. Sturdivant. They describe her as having a “kind and supportive demeanor and can-do attitude,” and being “positive, thorough, fair, respectful and selfless.” Her supervisor concurs and praised her ability to respond to and make accommodations for emergencies, including hurricanes (twice) and bomb threats (building closure and cancelled sections), and always doing her job with “personal dedication to the program,” “tireless efforts to improve all aspects of the program,” “sincere concern for the quality of instruction in our freshman and sophomore-level courses,” and “commitment to making the program efficient, effective and congenial for all students, faculty and staff.” Ms. Sturdivant’s previous honors include the Department of Biology Outstanding Staff Award, the College of Science Outstanding Staff Award, and the President’s Meritorious Staff Award.
College: College of Science
Award Level: Staff
Ching-Yun
Suen
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Year Awarded: 2015
Ching-Yun Suen earned his Ph.D. from the University of Houston. After teaching there and at Texas A&M University, he joined the faculty of Texas A&M at Galveston in 1984. His outstanding reputation as a teacher stems from his deep commitment to the teaching profession and his lasting influence on his students. Dr. Suen is loved by his students. He is known for treating them with respect and devotion. A former department head writes that there were always students coming to Dr. Suen’s office and that he spent endless hours helping them to understand mathematics. A colleague adds that Dr. Suen brings “enthusiasm into all his classes” as evidenced by his excellent course evaluations and glowing comments from students. A former student commented that he remembers how much he “enjoyed his class and how easy he made understanding calculus.” But perhaps the most touching endorsement is that of a former student who wrote a strong letter of support for Dr. Suen despite the fact that she was just released from the hospital following a second heart transplant. During her freshman year, the student was diagnosed with heart failure and could not attend classes. She was given “incompletes” in most of her courses, but her Calculus I professor required her to take the final exam. Although not the professor in question, Dr. Suen volunteered to tutor her three times a week for four weeks at her parents’ home, which required him to travel from Galveston to Sugar Land, Texas, each time. With his help, she passed the course and ultimately graduated. She writes, “He went above and beyond to help a student like me with special circumstances, and I know I would not have passed the final exam without his help. He is a very generous, kind and caring teacher.” A colleague sums up, saying, “Dr. Suen is an outstanding teacher and a valued member of our department.”
College: Texas A&M Galveston-General Academics
Award Level: Teaching
Max
Summers
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Year Awarded: 1983
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Research
Nicholas
Suntzeff
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Year Awarded: 2012
Nicholas Suntzeff joined the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy in Texas A&M’s College of Science in 2006. He presently holds the Mitchell/Heep/Munnerlyn Chair in Observational Astronomy. He earned his Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of California at Santa Cruz and Lick Observatory. Before coming to Texas A&M, he was the associate director for science at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Chile.
In 1994 he co-founded the high-Z Supernova Team, which discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae in 1998. This discovery revolutionized cosmology and our understanding of the universe and identified an entirely new and unanticipated component of the universe, now commonly referred to as “dark energy.” This work was the basis for the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Overall, the body of his research results has helped reveal a universe that was mostly previously unknown. The findings demonstrated that our knowledge of the universe is wildly incomplete and helped to point the direction for major astronomy and particle physics experiments in the coming decades.
At Texas A&M, Dr. Suntzeff established an astronomy component in the Department of Physics and coordinated Texas A&M’s participation in the Giant Magellan Telescope Project. He plays major leadership roles in the astronomy research community. He has published more than 230 articles in refereed journals and has more than 25,000 citations. His awards include the ISI Highly Cited Scientist Award in 2003 and the Gruber Prize for Cosmology in 2007. In 2010, he began a 3-year term as Vice President of the American Astronomical Society. In 2011, he was a Jefferson Senior Science Fellow in the Office of Human Rights at the U.S. Department of State.
College: Science
Award Level: Research
John
Sweeten
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Year Awarded: 1986
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Extension/ Continuing Education
William
Synder
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Year Awarded: 1982
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
David
Szymanski
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Year Awarded: 1995
College: Business
Award Level: Teaching
Henry
Taylor
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Year Awarded: 1991
College: Engineering
Award Level: Research
Vatche
Tchakerian
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Year Awarded: 2002
College: Geosciences
Award Level: Teaching
Bruce
Thompson
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Year Awarded: 2002
College: Education and Human Development
Award Level: Teaching
Herbert
Thompson
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Year Awarded: 1979
College: Business
Award Level: Teaching
J.G.H.
Thompson
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Year Awarded: 1959
College: Engineering
Award Level: Student Relations
Evelyn
Tiffany-Castiglioni
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Year Awarded: 1998
College: Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Science
Award Level: Research
Evelyn
Tiffany-Castiglioni
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Year Awarded: 2014
Evelyn Tiffany-Castiglioni currently serves as head of the Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences and as associate dean for undergraduate education—Biomedical Medical Sciences program. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and completed postdoctoral studies at UCLA. She joined the faculty of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in 1982. Dr. Castiglioni is currently a member of the editorial board for International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience and associate editor for Neurotoxicology. She is a member of the External Advisory Committee for the NIH SuperFund Program at the Harvard School of Public Health & Harvard Medical School. She is editor and co-author of a book and has published 82 peer-reviewed papers and 15 book chapters. She received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Research from The Association of Former Students in 2008. Her primary research interests are neurotoxicology and in vitro toxicology, particularly the mechanisms by which brain cells called astrocytes handle toxic metals.
As associate dean for undergraduate education, Dr. Castiglioni manages the largest undergraduate program on the Texas A&M campus. The program includes 1,858 undergraduate students and 56 faculty members/advisors. As department head, she oversees a research-intensive and teaching-oriented department with 48 full- and part-time faculty, 23 postdoctoral fellows and research associates, 71 graduate students, 17 staff members, and more than $4.1 million in contracts/grants annually. Her nominators say Dr. Castiglioni exhibits extraordinary competence, vision, poise, patience, and determination in parallel supervision of these programs and has been an active contributor to the success of Texas A&M via various platforms including her service on university committees and student/staff organizations. Her dean concludes, “Truly, Dr. Evelyn Castiglioni’s sincerity, warm personality and special human touch make her one of few administrators who do not simply leave an impact, but create a legacy.”
College: College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Award Level: Administration
David
Toback
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Year Awarded: 2007
David Toback, Associate Professor of Physics, joined the Texas A&M faculty in 2000 and has since received a college-level Distinguished Achievement Award in teaching in 2004, a Corps of Cadets award in 2002, and was named a Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar in 2002-03. He has worked tirelessly to improve the introductory physics courses for engineers and to bring a course on the Big Bang and Black Holes to non-scientists. In addition to being a dynamic and motivating teacher, known for using comic relief to teach physics concepts at 8:00 a.m., he has developed multiple web-based systems to aid student learning. These systems were so successful that they have been adopted in all the introductory physics courses, published in a top physics education research journal, and presented in invited talks on web-based learning.
One former graduate teaching assistant, now a faculty member at the College of William and Mary, stated that Dr. Toback “not only does an exceptional job of teaching Physics to undergraduate students, he also teaches graduate students to be exceptional teachers.” A senior Chemical Engineering major who had the 8 a.m. class as a freshman says, “I honestly believe Dr. Toback and his teaching style played a vital role in helping me develop confidence in my learning abilities and effective study habits that have carried through the past four years.”
College: Science
Award Level: Teaching
Michael
Tomaszewski
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Year Awarded: 1991
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Extension/ Continuing Education
Christine
Townsend
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Year Awarded: 1994
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Teaching
Ralph
Traxler
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Year Awarded: 1966
College: Engineering
Award Level: Research
Robert E.
Tribble
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Year Awarded: 2002
College: Science
Award Level: Research
W.I.
Truettner
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Year Awarded: 1963
College: Engineering
Award Level: Teaching
Patricia
Turner
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Year Awarded: 1985
College: Engineering
Award Level: Extension/ Continuing Education
Victor
Ugaz
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Year Awarded: 2013
Victor Ugaz earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees at The University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Northwestern University. He joined the faculty of the Dwight Look College of Engineering in January 2003 where he holds the Kenneth R. Hall Development Professorship.
His teaching efforts have been recognized by a number of awards including the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Tenneco Meritorious Teaching Award, the Celanese Teaching Excellence Award, and the Departmental Professor of the Year Award from the student chapter of the American Institute for Chemical Engineers. His nominator says Dr. Ugaz’s passion for teaching and mentoring is a reflection of his ability to communicate with students. He incorporates innovative educational experiences in the classroom and is always working to introduce new examples from current scientific research, including his own. He also demonstrates a strong commitment to undergraduate research, having supervised 24 students, three of whom are coauthors on publications.
One of his student coauthors writes, “Apart from conducting high impact research through his out-of- the-box thinking, Professor Victor Ugaz is one of the most influential and unique educators and I feel privileged to be learning from him.” A former student writes that Dr. Ugaz’s “ability to explain complex material was exceptional, and when it required further individual attention, aside from his normal office hours, he was virtually accessible at anytime.” A former undergraduate research student credits Dr. Ugaz as having had a great influence on his research career and successes. He writes, “ . . . it was not until I had other lab experiences that I really came to value my time in Texas. Comparatively, this has been the best research learning experience . . . .”He concludes, “I consider myself extremely lucky to have worked with him.”
College: Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering
Award Level: Teaching
Roger S.
Ulrich
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Year Awarded: 2006
College: Architecture
Award Level: Research