John L.
Crompton '77
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Year Awarded: 2016
John Crompton, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, earned his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. He joined the faculty of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1974. He has also served on the faculty of the Department of Marketing and as a consultant. His numerous awards include the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Agriculture Sciences National Excellence in Teaching Award, a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor award for excellence in teaching at Texas universities, a Texas A&M University Presidential Professor of Teaching Excellence award, and The Association of Former Students University-Level Award for Teaching. Over his career, he has chaired more than 30 Ph.D. and 50 M.S. committees. Each of these students has been taught to conceptualize abstract concepts and to empirically examine phenomena. In addition, through his mentorship, these students have learned to distribute the results of their research through high-quality writing and presentations. A colleague and former graduate student wrote, “John Crompton’s interest in his graduate students can be described as nurturing, parental, empowering, critical, intense, intrusive and invasive. We wouldn’t have it any other way!” His nominator commented that it is obvious that Dr. Crompton “enjoys helping young researchers and professionals achieve their potential,” and noted that he has the “uncommon ability to help people of all skill levels realize their potential.” A supporter added, “He always knew how to create a person-specific academic environment in which there is room for individual creativity and professional growth, bringing out the best in his students.” His supporters consistently praise his ability to instill confidence by encouraging students to raise their aspirations and demonstrating to them that they can accomplish much more than they think they can.
College: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Graduate Mentoring
Ben
Crouch
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Year Awarded: 1984
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Elizabeth
Crouch '91
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Year Awarded: 2017
Elizabeth Crouch, assistant dean for undergraduate education and lecturer in the Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, earned her Ph.D. in genetics from Texas A&M University. She joined the Biomedical Sciences Program (BIMS) as an academic advisor in 2001 and rose to the position of director in 2008 and assistant dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in 2014. Among her many duties are to counsel students, supervise the BIMS advising staff, and help set the policies of the program. She has taught 14 semesters at Texas A&M, including 6 semesters of a course she designed: An Introduction to Phenotypic Expression in the Context of Human Medicine. Her current areas of interest are student development/retention, promotion of student research and study abroad, and effective mentoring. Her nominator wrote that Dr. Crouch helps and inspires students, cares deeply about their welfare and development, and meets their individual needs while requiring them to accept their responsibilities and rise to their fullest potentials. Her supporters describe her as a highly engaged administrator who interacts continually with the more than 2,300 high-achieving and diverse undergraduate students in the College. They speak of the sustained, individualized, compassionate help she consistently gives to students. Recurrent themes include her commitment to individuals’ wellbeing, her personalization of guidance to meet individual students’ circumstances and goals, her problem-solving abilities, her attentiveness to detail, her empathy and her interpersonal skills. In the words of a former student who is now in medical school, “Dr. Crouch is one of the most compassionate and caring people that I have ever met….I can honestly say that knowing Dr. Crouch has made me a better man, a better student and a better mentor to others.”
College: College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Award Level: Student Relations
Thomas
Crowley
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Year Awarded: 2001
College: Geosciences
Award Level: Research
Stephen
Curley
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Year Awarded: 1992
College: Geosciences
Award Level: Teaching
Richard
Curry
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Year Awarded: 1998
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Guy L.
Curry
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Year Awarded: 2010
College: Dwight Look College of Engineering
Award Level: Teaching
Jack Autrey
Dabbs
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Year Awarded: 1974
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Research
Alan
Dabney
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Year Awarded: 2017
Alan Dabney, associate professor of statistics, earned a Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of Washington. Since joining the College of Science faculty in 2006, Dr. Dabney has dedicated himself to undergraduate teaching. His particular strengths are in transforming complicated material into easily accessible lessons and in developing inventive curriculum that can be used by other faculty. His innovative approach to teaching is exemplified by his creation of an educational video that features him on green screen with special effects as he presents statistics lectures to undergraduates. The video was so successful that Freeman Publishing secured his services for the production of a series of 35 similar video lectures on introductory statistics. Dr. Dabney has co-authored The Cartoon Introduction to Statistics, which presents introductory statistics material in a graphic novel format, effectively using unique visual techniques creatively to teach key concepts of statistics. In addition, he has published a computer simulation in the journal Teaching Statistics that can be used in the classroom to teach introductory statistics. He also was instrumental in the development of the new bachelor of science degree in statistics that he co-advises with a faculty colleague all statistics majors. Dr. Dabney is the recipient of The Association of Former Students College-Level Award for Teaching, the Texas A&M Montague?Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar Award, and the Eppright Professorship in Undergraduate Teaching Excellence. A former undergraduate student wrote this about working on statistics research with Dr. Dabney, “This was a formative experience for me, which revealed to me the excitement and creativity that exists in current statistics research: a perspective that is all too difficult to see when taking a typical introductory statistics class.”
College: Department of Statistics
Award Level: Teaching
Paul Frederick
Dahm
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Year Awarded: 2001
College: Science
Award Level: Student Relations
Stephen H.
Daniel
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Year Awarded: 1992
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Stephen H.
Daniel
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Year Awarded: 2005
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Norbert
Dannhaeuser
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Year Awarded: 1999
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Ronald
Darby
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Year Awarded: 1971
College: Engineering
Award Level: Teaching
Marcetta
Darensbourg
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Year Awarded: 1995
College: Science
Award Level: Research
Marcetta
Darensbourg
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Year Awarded: 2012
At an early age Marcetta Darensbourg discovered science to be a passion that led her to pursue graduate studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana. After earning her Ph.D. in chemistry, academic appointments followed and she eventually rose through the ranks at Tulane University. In 1982, she and her husband joined the faculty at Texas A&M’s College of Science where she built a strong research program in synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry while mentoring nearly 50 graduate students through to Ph.D. status. In addition, she has mentored 13 post-doctoral fellows and has regularly hosted international visiting scientists and exchange students.
Dr. Darensbourg has lectured worldwide and has served as editor-in-chief and co-editor of several inorganic source materials, including a textbook in general chemistry. She has also published more than 220 peer-reviewed journal articles. Her vitae and list of publications attest to her active research career. Although her leadership in research is a major legacy, her most visible “product” is the raft of graduate students who are enjoying successful careers in academia and other professions in the chemical community.
As a testament to her mentoring capabilities, former students write in glowing terms about Dr. Darensbourg’s energy and enthusiasm for her students and profession. One says, “Although my days as a student have been over for many years, Marcetta continues to be a mentor to me as well as to her other former students.” Another says, “Every day I aspire to provide the same supportive but rigorous mentoring that Marcetta gave to me. She instilled in me a thirst for quality, and an appreciation for the sublime in science and in my life. I feel quite lucky to have a mentor of her dedication at a crucial stage of my life.”
College: Science
Award Level: Graduate Mentoring
Akhil
Datta-Gupta
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Year Awarded: 2014
Akhil Datta-Gupta is a Regents Professor and holder of the L.F. Peterson '36 Endowed Chair in Petroleum Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Dwight Look College of Engineering faculty in 1994. He is well known for his contributions to the theory and practice of streamline simulation in petroleum reservoir characterization, management and calibration of high-resolution geologic models. Three-D streamline simulation is considered to be one of the major developments in petroleum reservoir simulation and performance forecasting. Among his numerous awards, Dr. Datta-Gupta has received two of the top three technical awards given by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and he has twice won the prestigious SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Award. He was elected to membership in the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2012. He has published more than 75 peer reviewed papers in a series of scientific journals and is the author of 3 books.
A colleague at Texas A&M wrote, “Dr. Akhil Datta-Gupta leads one of the most vigorous, exciting research programs in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering” and “he has made some of the most significant technological advances in reservoir characterization and simulation of anybody in the oil and gas industry.” A colleague from another university added that the best indicator of Dr. Datta-Gupta’s impact is the fact that the knowledge he and his lab created and the technologies they developed have been incorporated into industry-level workflows and are widely used by the oil and gas industry around the world. Another colleague sums it up saying, “Akhil Datta-Gupta’s work has had a real and lasting impact on the technology of the energy industry, adding significantly to the stability of our energy supply, and encouraging further reservoir characterization research.”
College: College of Engineering
Award Level: Research
Manuel
Davenport
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Year Awarded: 1978
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Manuel
Davenport
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Year Awarded: 1989
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
David
David
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Year Awarded: 1994
College: Education and Human Development
Award Level: Teaching
Darryl
de Ruiter
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Year Awarded: 2016
Darryl de Ruiter, professor of anthropology, earned his Ph.D. in anatomical sciences from the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He joined the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts in 2003 after completing postdoctoral research with the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontology in South Africa. Dr. de Ruiter is internationally recognized as a preeminent scholar in the field of paleoanthropology. He has co-authored more than 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, including almost a dozen papers in the journals Science and Nature. His research has been featured on the covers of Science, Time Magazine, Discover Magazine, and Scientific American, as well as on television programs on the National Geographic Channel and in a recent PBS NOVA special. Dr. de Ruiter is one of three principal investigators at the famous Malapa site in South Africa, responsible for analyzing the skulls, jaws, and teeth of the early human ancestor Australopithecus sediba. He serves as a principal investigator at the newly discovered Rising Star Cave fossil site in South Africa, where the remains of dozens of individuals of a new type of human ancestor have been found, which Dr. de Ruiter and his colleagues call Homo naledi. Support letters from around the world indicate that his research is transforming the field of paleoanthropology, saying that he is “doing work at the forefront of human evolutionary studies”; “his actions represent “a new ethos in the discipline”; he is “clearly at the top of his field and deserving of recognition for excellence in research”; his work “has been groundbreaking” and brings “a never-before held, detailed understanding of early hominin behavior; and “the breadth and impact” of his “work has been equaled by very few” in the field.
College: College of Liberal Arts
Award Level: Research
Michael D.
Delp
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Year Awarded: 2005
College: Education and Human Development
Award Level: Research
Maurice E.
Dennis
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Year Awarded: 2004
College: Education and Human Development
Award Level: Continuing Education/Extension
Darren L.
DePoy
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Year Awarded: 2015
Darren DePoy is an astronomer and holder of the endowed Rachal/Mitchell/Heep Professorship in Physics in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. He also serves as deputy director of the Munnerlyn Astronomical Laboratory. He joined the faculty of the College of Science in 2008. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii. Dr. DePoy is a world leader in the development of astronomical instrumentation for ground-based telescopes. Before coming to Texas A&M he was the director of Astronomical Instrumentation at The Ohio State University. While there, he was project scientist for the Dark Energy Survey camera—the world’s largest digital camera—that is now working in Chile. Although it is common for astronomers who are experts in instrumentation to not do science along with instrumentation development, Dr. DePoy actively uses the instruments he builds. His main field of work has been the study of active galactic nuclei fueled by the enormous black holes, and the discovery of exoplanets using “microlensing,” the rapid brightening and fading of a distant star by a foreground object. He is also involved with other initiatives, including the Giant Magellan Telescope. His leadership in astronomical instrumentation has positioned Texas A&M as a premiere institution in astronomical instrumentation. His international impact is expressed by a few quotes from colleagues. “Darren’s contributions to astronomical research…have expanded the frontier of astronomical observations,” “His work has enabled, or aided, the research of hundreds of professional research astronomers world-wide,” and “By training the next generation of instrumentalists DePoy is making a contribution to the future of astronomy that will endure.” His nominator sums up, saying, “We were incredibly fortunate to bring Prof. DePoy to Texas A&M.”
College: College of Science
Award Level: Research
Andrew
Dessler
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Year Awarded: 2018
Andrew Dessler earned a bachelor’s degree from Rice University and a doctorate from Harvard University. He also did postdoctoral work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and spent nine years on the research faculty of the University of Maryland. He joined the faculty of the College of Geosciences in 2005 and holds the Earl F. Cook Professor of Geosciences at Texas A&M University. Dr. Dessler’s scientific research revolves around climate sensitivity ? how much warming of the climate system occurs per unit carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. As part of this, he has researched individual climate feedbacks, in particular how water vapor and clouds act to amplify an initial temperature perturbation of the climate system. He is widely recognized to be among the world’s experts in this area. During the last year of the Clinton Administration, he served as a senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Based on this, as well as his research experience, he has authored two books on climate change: The science and politics of global climate change: A guide to the debate (co-written with Edward Parson), and Introduction to modern climate change. This latter book won the 2014 American Meteorological Society Louis J. Battan Author's Award. He was named a Google Science Communication Fellow in recognition of his work communicating climate science to the public, and he received the American Geophysical Union’s Ascent Award from the atmospheric sciences section to reward exceptional research achievements by a mid-career scientist. In 2017, Dr. Dessler was elected an AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “outstanding research in atmospheric chemistry and physics, teaching, writing, and community service.”
College: Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Award Level: Research
Katherine
Dettwyler
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Year Awarded: 2001
College: Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Ronald A.
DeVore
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Year Awarded: 2014
Ronald A. DeVore is a University Distinguished Professor and the Walter E. Koss Professor in the Department of Mathematics. He has been a faculty member of the College of Science since 2007. He earned his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Known internationally for the breadth and originality of his fundamental contributions to applied mathematics, Dr. DeVore has received many honors, including the Fondation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris Gold Medal, the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, and the Bulgarian Gold Medal of Science. He is a member of the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has more than 155 refereed journal publications, 3 books and 10 expository articles. His work has been cited more than 15,000 times.
Dr. DeVore’s career touches upon many areas of mathematics, including approximation theory, numerical analysis, signal/image processing, and statistical estimation. His research has been rated by his peers as “profound and revolutionary,” his contributions as “fundamental,” his work as being endowed with “an exceptional mutually synergetic balance between theory and applications,” and his achievements as “simply astounding.” A supporter from Duke University said, “If I could build my own Dream Team of mathematical researchers of both theory and applications, he would be its Captain.” Another supporter adds, “Prof. Ron DeVore is my hero. Why is he my hero? Because he is all what we dream of becoming as faculty members.” The trademark of Professor DeVore’s work is that, as another colleague summarizes, “many of his results have been the first of a particular kind, thereby becoming door openers, exhibiting in a way the highest level of genuine novelty.”
College: College of Science
Award Level: Research