Robin Wright and David Matthes receive collegiate awards for their outstanding contributions to undergraduate education.
John S. Anderson Leadership Award: Robin Wright
Stanley Dagley-Samuel Kirkwood Undergraduate Education Award: David Matthes
Robin Wright received the John S. Anderson Leadership Award, which recognizes exceptional contributions of faculty and staff to their department as well as the college. Scott Lanyon (Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior) and Gary Muehlbauer (Plant Biology) prepared the nomination citing Wright’s many efforts to improve the CBS undergraduate experience.
“Robin's leadership has transformed the CBS undergraduate experience through her work with Nature of Life, the Foundations course series, and her advocacy for the construction of classrooms designed to support active learning,” says Lanyon. “As a consequence, CBS undergraduate students are experiencing state-of-the-art biology education, our college is enjoying an enhanced national reputation, and we are able to accept more students while maintaining our very high admissions standards.”
David Matthes received the Stanley Dagley-Samuel Kirkwood Undergraduate Education Award, which recognizes exceptional faculty contributions to undergraduate education, including classroom presentation, educational innovation and curriculum development.
"David Matthes is a master of designing innovative coursework to challenge students, maximize learning, and provide consistent and to-the-point feedback every step of the way, all the while adding just enough humor to the mix to keep students engaged,” says Susan Wick (Plant Biology), who nominated Matthes for the award. “His philosophy of guiding students to do the work of the field is found not only in his Foundations teaching but also in his active learning cell biology course, the bioinformatics course he developed, and his freshman seminar on the human genome.”