Stanford Report, June 14, 2006

Centennial Teaching Assistant Awards honor 41 for outstanding contributions

Scholars from the schools of Humanities and Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering to receive certificate, $500

Forty-one teaching assistants in disciplines ranging from art and art history to sociology will receive Centennial Teaching Assistant (CTA) Awards during a ceremony June 17. The awards honor outstanding instruction by teaching assistants in the schools of Humanities and Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Engineering. Each recipient will receive a certificate and $500 prize.

In 1989, psychology Professor Ewart Thomas launched the program when he was dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences to recognize the important role that teaching assistants play at Stanford. Each year, half of the departments in the School of Humanities and Sciences are invited to choose from one to three graduate student teachers (depending on the size of the department) to receive the CTA honor. All departments in the schools of Engineering and Earth Sciences may nominate teaching assistants, from which two to seven awardees are chosen, said Linda Salser, program manager at the Center for Teaching and Learning. The selection is regarded as a process, not a competition, that recognizes outstanding teaching assistants over time, Salser said. The CTA program in the School of Humanities and Sciences is endowed by gifts from university supporters and alumni. The new Centennial Teaching Assistants are:

School of Humanities and Sciences

Art and Art History: Karen Rapp and Soyoung Yoon

Chemistry: Jon Camden, Thomas Pillow and Ignacio Zuleta

Classics: Kathryn Balsley

German: Per Urlaub and Andrew Utter

History: Jehangir Malegam and Tamara Venit

Human Biology: Victoria Parikh

Music: Juan Pablo Caceres, Erinn Losness and Hiroko Terasawa

Philosophy: Sarah Darby and Ryo Kikuchi

Physics: Mustafa Amin, Asimina Arvanitaki and Navin Sivanandam

Political Science: Matthew Carnes, James Morrison and Jessica Weeks

Psychology: Christopher Bryan, Sapna Cheryan, Hal Ersner-Hershfield and MarYam Hamedani

Slavic Languages and Literatures: Thomas Roberts

Sociology: Brian Colwell and Stefanie Mollborn

School of Earth Sciences

Earth Systems Program: Jill Bible and Lynda Browning

Geological and Environmental Sciences: Jim Metcalf

Geophysics: Benjamin Saenz

Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources: Becca Goldman and Joshua Goldstein

Petroleum Engineering: Alexandre Boucher

School of Engineering

Chemical Engineering: Steve Abel

Civil and Environmental Engineering: Curtis Haselton

Computer Science: Björn Hartmann

Electrical Engineering: Kivanc Ozonat

Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering: Kathy Lora Jensen