Teaching assistants representing a wide range of disciplines will be honored with Centennial Teaching Assistant Awards at a ceremony on June 16. The program recognizes and rewards outstanding teaching by teaching assistants in the Schools of Humanities and Sciences, Earth Sciences and Engineering.
EWART THOMAS, professor of psychology, started the program in 1989, during his years as H&S dean, in order to acknowledge and celebrate the important role that TAs play in teaching at Stanford. Each year half of the departments in H&S are invited to choose usually one to three (depending on the department or program’s size) of their graduate student teachers to be honored by the designation Centennial TA. In Engineering and Earth Sciences, all departments are eligible to nominate TAs each year, and five to nine are chosen winners. PAMELA MATSON, dean of the School of Earth Sciences, and JAMES PLUMMER, dean of the School of Engineering, will join RICHARD SALLER, dean of H&S, in paying tribute to their Centennial TAs during the ceremony. Each recipient is awarded a certificate and a $500 prize.
When selecting their Centennial TAs, departments are encouraged to seek the widest participation of their faculty and graduate students and the use of a broad range of information about teaching assistants’ effectiveness and contributions; student evaluations of TAs are also consulted. This is not meant to be a competition, but rather a process that recognizes TAs with a record of outstanding contributions over time.
Endowment gifts for the Centennial TA Program in Humanities and Sciences were made by Stanford friends and alums BILL (’56) and REVA (’54) TOOLEY of Los Angeles, JOAN and the late MELVIN LANE (’44) of Atherton and MARTA S. WEEKS (’51) of Miami.
The honorees and their departments follow.
SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SCIENCES
Art History: YVETTE DEAS
Chemistry: LINDSEY HANSON, LUKE OLTROGGE and BRIAN SMITH
Classics: DAN-EL PADILLA PERALTA
German Studies: LILLA BALINT
History: JULIA MANSFIELD and SUZANNE SUTHERLAND-DUCHACEK
Human Biology: AUTUMN ALBERS
Music: CLARE ROBINSON
Philosophy: SAMUEL ASARNOW and SARA-JAYNE KERR
Physics: KIEL HOWE, PAUL SIMEON and SONNY VO
Political Science: LONJEZO HAMISI, ARIEL MENDEZ and NICHOLAS SHER
Psychology: YULA PALUY, PAUL THIBODEAU and CHARLENE WU
Slavic Languages and Literatures: ANNA LORDAN
Sociology: ANDREW ISAACSON and TRACI TUCKER
SCHOOL OF EARTH SCIENCES
Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources: ROBERT HEILMAYR
Earth Systems Program: SAM RAMIREZ and SOPHIE THEIS
Energy Resources Engineering: HAI XUAN VO
Environmental Earth System Science: MICHAEL TSIANG
Geological and Environmental Sciences: DANIEL NAYLOR
Geophysics: YUNYUE LI
SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
Bioengineering: PEIRAN GAO
Civil and Environmental Engineering: ANNE-LAURE CUVILLIEZ and ROBBY ZELLER
Electrical Engineering: DAVID CHEN
Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering: SUDARSAN N. S. ACHARYA
Materials Science and Engineering: ZACH BEILEY and SAAHIL MEHRA
Mechanical Engineering: MICHAEL BARAKO and DANIEL JACOBS
