Biological Sciences Blog

Category: Teaching

4 Biological Sciences Faculty Announced as Distinguished Teaching Award Finalists

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The Michigan Tech Distinguished Teaching Award is presented annually. Since 1982, an award has been given in each category: 1. Associate Professor or Professor and 2. Lecturer, Professor of Practice, or Assistant Professor.  Based on more than 50,000 student rating of instruction responses, 12 finalists have been identified for the 2018 awards. Out of the 12 finalists, 4 of them are from the Department of Biological Sciences!

This year’s finalists are:

Assistant Professor / Lecturer / Professor of Practice Category

  • Andrew Barnard (MEEM), Assistant Professor
  • Lisa Johnson de Gordillo (VPA), Assistant Professor
  • Heather Knewtson (SBE), Assistant Professor
  • Brigitte Morin (Bio Sci), Senior Lecturer
  • Stephen Techtmann (Bio Sci), Assistant Professor
  • Ebenezer Tumban (Bio Sci), Assistant Professor
  • Jeffrey Wall (SBE), Assistant Professor

Associate Professor / Professor Category

  • Andrew Burton (SFRES), Professor
  • Ann Maclean (SFRES), Professor
  • Amy Marcarelli (Bio Sci), Associate Professor
  • Christopher Webster (SFRES), Professor
  • Richelle Winkler (Soc Sci), Associate Professor

This is the second year in a row that Brigitte Morin has been nominated for the award. She instructs foundation courses in our Medical Laboratory Science program and has also created a popular new course on the practice and science of yoga. Stephen Techtmann teaches environmental and advanced microbiology courses. Ebenezer Tumban teaches our general microbiology and virology courses. Amy Marcarelli teaches a variety of ecology courses and created a new professional development course for graduate students in science.

The William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning seeks input for the finalists. Comments on the nominees are due by Monday, March 26, and can be completed online. The process for determining the Distinguished Teaching Award recipients from this list of finalists also involves the additional surveying of their spring classes.

The selection committee makes the final determination of the award recipients. The 2018 Distinguished Teaching Awards will be formally announced in May.

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Top 10% Biological Science Instructors 2016-17

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Karyn Fay teaching a student.Heartiest congratulations to the following faculty, staff and graduate students from Biological Sciences Department who have been identified as one of instructors who received an exceptional “Average of 7 Dimensions” student evaluation scores during the 2016-17 academic year. Their scores were in the top 10% of similarly sized sections university-wide that had at least a 50% response rate.

Provost Jacqueline Huntoon recently congratulated them for their outstanding accomplishments in teaching.

The following faculty received scores above 4.67 out of 5 on average of 7 elements of university-wide class size group during the Fall 2016 semester:

  • Dr. John Durocher, Assistant Professor
  • Ms. Brigitte Morin, Lecturer
  • Dr. Ebenezer Tumban, Assistant Professor
  • Dr. Thomas Werner, Assistant Professor (Distinguished Teaching Award Recipient in 2013)

The following instructors received scores above 4.7 out of 5 on average of 7 elements of university-wide class size group during the Fall 2016 semester:

  • Cameron Goble, Graduate Student Instructor
  • Lexi Herrewig, Graduate Student Instructor
  • Travis Wakeham, Graduate Student Instructor
  • Lukai Zhai, Graduate Student Instructor

The following faculty received scores above 4.59 out of 5 on average of 7 elements of university-wide class size group during the Spring 2017 semester:

  • Dr. Casey Huckins, Professor
  • Ms. Brigitte Morin, Lecturer (Nominated for Distinguished Teaching Award in 2017)
  • Ms. Karyn Fay, Professor of Practice (Distinguished Teaching Award Recipient in 2016)
  • Dr. Ebenezer Tumban, Assistant Professor
  • Dr. Thomas Werner, Assistant Professor (Distinguished Teaching Award Recipient in 2013)

The following instructors received scores above 4.61 out of 5 on “average of 7 elements” of university-wide class size group during the Spring 2017 semester:

  • Yiping Mao, Graduate Student Instructor
  • Travis Wakeham, Instructor and Lab Supervisor
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New Faculty joins Biology this semester

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Today, we take a look at and welcome faculty who have started with the Fall Semester.

Xiaohu Tang joins Michigan Tech’s Department of Biological Sciences as an assistant professor. Tang earned his PhD from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Prior to coming to Tech, Tang worked as a research scholar in the Center for Genomic and Computational Biology at Duke University’s School of Medicine.

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Top 10% Biological Sciences Instructors in Spring 2016

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Fay teaching
Karyn Fay is showing a student a lab technique

Dr. Joshi congratulates the top 10% Biological Sciences instructors in spring 2016:

Heartiest congratulations to the following faculty and graduate students from Biological Sciences Department who have been identified as one of only 85 campus-wide instructors who received an exceptional “Average of 7 dimensions” student evaluation scores during Spring 2016 semester. Their scores were in the top 10% of similarly sized sections university-wide that had at least a 50% response rate.

Provost Jacqueline Huntoon recently congratulated them for their outstanding accomplishments in teaching.

The following faculty received scores above 4.63 out of 5 on average of 7 elements of university-wide class size group with response rate of >50% on student evaluations of their lecture classes:

  • Dr. Amy Marcarelli, Associate Professor
  • Ms. Brigitte Morin, Lecturer
  • Ms. Karyn Fay, Professor of Practice (Winner of teaching award in 2016)
  • Dr. Thomas Werner, Assistant Professor (Winner of teaching award in 2013)

The following instructors received scores above 4.76 out of 5 on “average of 7 elements” of university-wide class size group with response rate of >50% on student evaluations of their classes:

  • Jeff Kiiskila, Graduate Student Instructor
  • Dr. Michelle Seguin, Instructor

Shekhar

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Fay winner of distinguished teaching award

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FayOriginally published in Tech Today

Choi, Fay Receive Distinguished Teaching Awards

by Mark Wilcox

Chang Kyong Choi (ME-EM) and Karyn Fay (Bio Sci), have been named winners of the 2016 Distinguished Teaching Awards.

Choi, affectionately known as “CK”, won in the Associate Professor/Professor category, while Fay, a professor of practice, received the award in the Assistant Professor/Lecturer/Professor of Practice category.

Choi received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Chung-ang University in Seoul, Korea and earned a PhD from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

He emphasizes a personalized learning connection with each of his students, achieved through active individual meetings while valuing what he calls the “unique ideas, experiences, strengths and attitudes” each student brings to the classroom. Read Choi’s full story.

Fay, a native of Manistique, received a BS in Medical Technology from Lake Superior State College (now Lake Superior State University). She worked in medical labs throughout the country, returning to the Upper Peninsula to earn a Master’s in Biological Sciences.

After serving as hematology superior at a local hospital, she came to Michigan Tech initially as an adjunct faculty member in 2002, eventually turning to teaching full time. Read Fay’s full story.

Fay and Choi will each receive a $2,500 monetary award and a plaque at an awards dinner sponsored by University President Glenn Mroz in the fall.

 

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Travis Wakeham awarded numerous honors by Graduate Student Government

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travis wakehamGraduate student, Travis Wakeham was recently honored with numerous awards by the Graduate Student Government , including:

Outstanding Teaching Award for his involvement and development of our Anatomy and Physiology laboratories working closely with Dr. John Durocher and Brigitte Morin.

Best oral presentation at the recent Graduate Student Colloquium  that includes an award of  $300.

Best attended oral presentation at the Colloquium that includes an award of $50.

In addition, his picture was featured on the TV website reporting on the Colloquium.

Travis is a Masters student working in the lab of  Dr. John Durocher and conducted much of the research for his presentation in the lab of collaborating colleague Dr. Stephen Elmer in the Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology.

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Dr. Durocher this weeks Props for Profs winner

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DurocherThis week’s Jackson CTL Props for Profs Winner is John Durocher, (Bio SCI).  John’s anonymous nominator said he “made it a personal goal to see everybody succeed.” The nominator especially liked the extra “study slides, review videos, and practice questions” that John provided, and appreciated the extra time these must have taken to develop.   Finally, John was praised for his prompt response to e-mail and effective integration of real-life examples into the course.

Both Durocher and his nominator will receive a $5 gift certificate to purchase a snack or drink at the Library Café or several other locations on campus.

Edited from From Tech Today

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Updated – picture locations for Lake Superior Explorations BL5421

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Great Lakes Exploration

Updated with  a map LakeSuperiorExplore_photolocationsshowing the GPS locations for the pictures taken by Colin Brooks.  Each color represents a different day; each dot indicates the GPS location that Colin’s GPS linked camera recorded. They covered a lot of water!

 

See photos from the BL5421 course Lake Superior Explorations on the GLRC Flickr page.

Also see the list of YouTube videos including aboard the research vessel as well as underwater footage.

BL5421 Lake Superior Explorations for Graduate Students Summer 2015
Photos by Emil Groth and Colin Brooks
This is a field intensive Biological Sciences course at the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Technological University with significant time spent on research vessels (R/V Agassiz or NOAA R/V 5501) where students will learn the use of a variety of state-of-the-art techniques to characterize biological communities and measure important physical and biological processes.Instructors:Nancy A. Auer, Amy Marcarelli, Gary Fahnenstiel, Casey Huckins, (all Biological Sciences.) and Marty Auer (CEE) and Guy Meadows, Director of GLRC
.Explorations will take students to several Lake Superior environments, weather permitting, including the Ontonagon River, Huron and Keweenaw Bays and several sites along the western shoreline of the Keweenaw Peninsula. This voyage of discovery will target ecosystem processes, seeking signals of their presence along boundaries in time and space, including day/night sampling and over gradients found at the interface between tributaries and the open lake, along the major axis of embayments and across the coastal margin.Areas of coverage include: Collection of standard light, temperature, DO profiles, use of drogues/drifters to track current, Autonomous vehicle application, Sonar profiles, Primary production by microbes and algae, day and night comparisons of zooplankton, benthos and fish, and ROVs to observe these organisms, and standard PONAR and sediment collection.

 

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