Faculty Tribute 2020

Teaching and Mentorship Awards

• Student Government Association Outstanding Faculty Award
• University Distinguished Teaching Awards
• General Education Teaching Award
• University College Seminar Outstanding Instructor Award
• Gateway to College Learning Outstanding Instructor Award
• First-Year Student Mentoring Program Outstanding Mentor Award
• Nancy L. Mergler Faculty Mentor Award for Undergraduate Research
• Provost’s Community Engagement Award for Outstanding Engaged Teaching
• Merrick Foundation Teaching Award

Research Awards

• Provost’s Community Engagement Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity
• Henry Daniel Rinsland Memorial Award for Excellence in Educational Research
• Vice President for Research and Partnerships Award for Outstanding Research Impact
• Vice President for Research and Partnerships Award for Outstanding Research Engagement

Regents' Awards

• Regents' Awards for Superior Teaching
• Regents' Awards for Research and Creative Activity

Distinguished Professorships

• David L. Boren Professorship
• David Ross Boyd Professorship
• George Lynn Cross Research Professorship
• Presidential Professorships

Service Recognition

• 50 years, 30 years, 20 years

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Chung-Hao Lee, School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Gallogly College of Engineering

Since joining the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering in 2016, assistant professor Chung-Hao Lee has established an independent, multidisciplinary research program with a focus on experimental and computational biomechanics that has rapidly grown into one of the largest biomedical research groups within the Gallogly College of Engineering.

In the first three years of his tenure track, Lee has taught a wide variety of AME courses at the undergraduate level and has also developed innovative course materials by integrating his expertise in mechanics and cutting-edge research technology.

Lee has been recognized by his colleagues for his strong passion for student mentoring. Students engaged in undergraduate research projects under his guidance have demonstrated academic excellence through receipt of numerous awards, including the Grand Prize Award at Oklahoma Research Day at the Capitol and the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship.

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Jenel T. Cavazos, Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences

In both her face-to-face and online classrooms, this associate professor of psychology is described as an engaging and dynamic instructor who brings course material to life with varied examples from a wide variety of media.

Again and again in her evaluations, students speak to Jenel Cavazos’s ability to keep lectures interesting and engaging and to make “the big lecture feel smaller and more involved.” Students find her classes to be applicable to a wide variety of majors and to real-life topics, with many mentioning they were able to take the material that they learned in class and use it to better understand their own major.

Her care for her students’ success can also be seen outside of the classroom. Each semester, she spends several hours leading Action Centers for her students through University College.

Additionally, Cavazos chairs the Provost’s Advisory Committee on General Education Assessment, serves on the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Learning Technologies and the Provost’s Advisory Council on Classrooms and Scheduling, and is an internship liaison for the Student Success Center. She also has served as a President’s Distinguished Faculty Mentorship Program Mentor.

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Jeffrey Provine, Freshman Programs, University College

Jeffrey Provine, an adjunct instructor in Freshman Programs, is passionate about teaching and skilled at helping his students uncover their potential. His students noted appreciation of his contagious enthusiasm and dedication to helping them learn in new and engaging ways. Their remarks  included:

• "The class was not only fun and interesting, but I felt excited to come to class every day!"
• "He encouraged conversations that allowed us to relate different topics to outside things and have discussions with cool people about interesting topics."
• "Professor Provine is an excellent teacher. He always encouraged discussion and questions and was very enthusiastic. His class would always make my day."
• "I really enjoyed your class. You are an amazing teacher, wish we could have had a longer class."

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Katy Powers, Behavioral Intervention Team, University Counseling Center

Katy Powers, outreach director for the University Counseling Center’s Behavioral Intervention Team, is committed to the learning and success of her students. She uses active learning methods to engage her first-year students in class and has built a community of learners that connect beyond the boundaries of the classroom. Katy's students noted appreciation of her effective teaching methods, dedication to helping them learn in active ways, enthusiasm about the course content, and her demonstrated holistic care for her students. Their remarks included:

• "Mrs. Powers was the best instructor that I have had this year. She is excellent at creating an environment where students feel comfortable to not only learn, but be vulnerable and themselves."
• "Katy was very welcoming and helpful inside and outside of class. It is obvious that she cares about her students."
• "Mrs. Powers provided fun and engaging curriculum. I enjoyed how we did a new lesson in every class. The class was a joy to go to. Assignments were always graded promptly and given back with positive feedback and constructive criticism."
• "Katy got to know her students personally and was very open to questions at any point. She was always enthusiastic about class and made sure everyone was involved."
• "Katy was a wonderful professor, who helped all of us in many ways. She was very kind, made us aware of resources at OU that we may need, taught us a lot, and above all made the atmosphere in the classroom welcoming."
  

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Oluwatobi “Tobi” Odeleye, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences

Oluwatobi “Tobi” Odeleye, a Nigerian native, holds a doctorate in chemistry; her research interest is Chemical Education.

She has been teaching at OU for about two years. Currently, she is teaching first-semester general chemistry, and will teach a graduate course in the fall focusing on pedagogical methods for teaching assistants.

Her passions include playing and watching tennis, generally being active, and reading.

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Christina Bourne, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences

Several undergraduate research assistants nominated this assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry for this award.

One nominator called Christina Bourne “the most excellent mentor I could ask for,” adding that she “has exemplified such passion and enthusiasm for biochemistry and structural biology that has inspired all of her students.”

Another student, who described her experiences with Bourne as “extremely positive,” wrote that Bourne “has done an outstanding job of creating a favorable environment for learning in the laboratory. In the course of my project, she has given me just the right amount of structure while also allowing me to work independently. Each time that she has given me a task to complete or a question to figure out, she has explained her rationale in a way that was easy for me to understand. She has always been extremely responsive to my questions and very helpful in assisting me with technical details in my experiments.”

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Janna Storey Martin, Department of Human Relations, College of Arts and Sciences

Janna Storey Martin is a lecturer in the Department of Human Relations who has been instrumental in the development of the Department’s service-learning curriculum and projects.

Recognizing early on the impact service learning could have on human relations students, as well as the University, community and state, she volunteered to develop service-learning programs and projects that would highlight the community service and social justice ideals of the Department of Human Relations.

During 2019, she, in conjunction and collaboration with human relations students and community partners, created and developed several service-learning projects. These included:

• "The Buddy Bench" project, created in fall of 2017 as a pilot project, has grown and continued to be taught at Wilson Elementary and Kennedy Elementary schools during the fall of 2019. Its aim is to recognize students who are being ignored and excluded by their classmates. A curriculum was created by the service-learning students which taught "Buddy Scouts" to recognize and act when they detected students being isolated and excluded.
• "Shadow Project" Days involved partnerships between her student groups and a local high school to target first generation-college students with the intent of introducing high school students to the college setting and making them aware that a college education is not out of their reach.

Other projects involved working with homeless high school students and a healthy and fit program involving local elementary schoolchildren.

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Chunbei Wang, Department of Economics, College of Arts and Sciences

Chunbei Wang is an assistant professor of economics who, although she joined the OU faculty only three years ago, has already established herself as an outstanding teacher, an excellent researcher and a valuable asset to the Department of Economics and the University.

Her research focuses on applying free-market theories to analyze important social issues, such as discrimination, immigration, entrepreneurship, labor market decisions and family formation. She is well-established in these fields, with numerous publications in well-respected and internationally noted journals.

Wang’s expertise allows her to offer insightful courses that introduce the application of free market economics in a variety of interesting and exciting ways.

Her greatest strength as a nominee for the Merrick Foundation Teaching Award is her unique insights on how free market economics can be applied to understanding important social issues and her exemplary ability in teaching them.

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Bonnie L. Pitblado, the Robert E. and Virginia Bell Endowed Professor in Anthropological Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences

This year’s recipient focuses her research on the initial peopling of the Americas more than 13,000 years ago, particularly in the high-altitude environments in the Rocky Mountains.

One of Bonnie Pitblado’s passions is connecting with the public through outreach and community-engaged research. She hit the ground running with plans for bringing archaeology to the public and the public to archaeologists when she came to OU in 2012.

The cornerstone of her community-engaged scholarship is her wide-ranging work as the founder and executive director of the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network, whose mission is "to bridge communities with a passion for the past through public education and outreach, research and teaching partnerships, and professional development opportunities."

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Ji Y. Hong, Department of Educational Psychology, Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education

This year’s recipient, Ji Hong, has served on the Department of Educational Psychology faculty since 2007.

She has demonstrated excellence in educational research in a single, long-impact project over time. Her research investigates an important area in teacher professional development: teacher identity and development for both in-service teachers and pre­service teachers. In Oklahoma and other areas where there is a high shortage of teachers and a lack of teacher professional development, her research is particularly noteworthy and meaningful.

Along the line of teacher professional development, she has engaged in a systematic program of studies that were built upon one another exploring various issues and constructs, including teacher's motivation, resilience, attrition and identity development over time.

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Samuel Perry, Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences 

Samuel Perry, who joined the Department of Sociology faculty in 2015, has already cemented his reputation as one of the top scholars of his generation. The assistant professor is a spectacularly prolific scholar in Sociology and Religious Studies, as he simultaneously makes key contributions in both disciplines and at their intersections.

In addition, he is a public sociologist, continuously making his research understandable, relevant and useful for a larger public outside academe.

He has over 70 peer-reviewed articles in highly regarded journals and is the author of three books – the last, to be published this year, on Christian nationalism. Perry's second book uses both qualitative and quantitative data from several national-level data resources to examine how the growing accessibility and cultural acceptance of pornography use is reshaping conservative Protestantism in this country. This book and related research have captured the national imagination over the last two years, and his work was featured extensively in diverse, popular media outlets, including National Public Radio, Time, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Discover Magazine.

In 2018, Perry, who also holds appointments in the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, was the recipient of the 2018 Irene Rothbaum Outstanding Assistant Professor Award.

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Ying Wang, Department of Mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences

Ying Wang has served on the Department of Mathematics faculty since 2013.

The interdisciplinary nature of this associate professor of mathematics’ research has led to results and publications in a wide range of areas, ranging from underground oil recovery models, terrestrial carbon dynamics, medical applications, computational linear algebra and image analysis, to HVAC optimization for smart buildings, and modeling social work practice in resettling refugee families.

The prime achievements of these projects are two­fold: to advance the fundamental understanding of the underline industrial, medical, engineering and biological applications, and to address the mathematical modeling, computation and analysis coming from such applications.

One of Wang’s interdisciplinary projects, "Mathematical Analysis and Numerical Methods for the Underground Oil Recovery Models," received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award.

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Robert Terry, Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences

Robert Terry is a professor and coordinator of the Quantitative Psychology Ph.D. Program in the Department of Psychology.

He is described by colleagues as an accomplished community-engaged researcher, a superb teacher and an outstanding university and professional citizen. Colleagues also refer to him as a kind and compassionate person who has inspired generations of colleagues and students, including many thousands of students who approached math with considerable anxiety until he set them at ease with his down-to-earth approach to complex statistical and data science topics.

He has contributed to over 150 scientific presentations and papers and helped secure more than $10 million in research funding (e.g., NIH, NIMH, NICHD, NSF), with special emphasis on promoting educational successes of diverse learners.

Today, the data-analytic technologies this faculty member has helped create have had a profound impact on higher education practices in Oklahoma and are routinely used for university admissions and retention programs.

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Cynthia Leigh Gordon, Department of Biology, College of Arts and Sciences  

Cynthia Leigh Gordon, an associate professor and director of the Human Anatomy Program in the Department of Biology, is described as a master teacher who uses varied strategies to win students’ active involvement.

Her favorite topic to teach is Human Anatomy “because it offers more take-home information for students than any other part of the course.”

Colleagues cite this faculty member for her innovative ways of helping students, noting that she recently extended this help to them before they had even signed up for her course. She created a pre-semester “boot camp” for “at-risk” students with low GPAs in the prerequisite classes in hopes of teaching them effective study techniques and time management skills to prepare them for her class as well as university studies in general.

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Amanda Minks, Honors College

During her 12 years in the Honors College, Amanda Minks has demonstrated a strong commitment to students as well as innovative approaches to pedagogy and extracurricular programming.

Her specialization in Indigenous Studies and Latin American Studies has provided cross-cultural expertise that both complements and goes beyond the initial focus of American Studies in the College. She has developed 10 original courses with variations, often revising the syllabus significantly to follow the interests and needs of new generations of students.

In 2016, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for a teaching/research residency at the Universidad Centroamerica in Managua, Nicaragua. She taught the nine-week seminar course entirely in Spanish, drawing primarily on Latin American authors, titled “Music and Culture: Theories and Ideologies for Ethnographic Research.”

With academic training in ethnomusicology and linguistic anthropology, the associate professor has supported the Honors College mission of providing an interdisciplinary liberal arts education to high-achieving undergraduate students preparing for a range of careers.

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Nikola P. Petrov, Department of Mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences

Professor of Mathematics Nikola P. Petrov is described by colleagues in the Department as “one of the most eclectic researchers and enthusiastic teachers we ever had.”

Prior to joining the OU faculty, he worked for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Described by colleagues as “very gregarious,” Petrov also is cited for his way of making people feel welcome by chatting to them about all sorts of topics and by sharing funny anecdotes. He takes this conversational style into the classroom. Additionally, he is deeply interested in the many twists and turns in the development of mathematics and physics and in the personalities involved in the creation of new ideas and the paths that led to their ingenious discoveries.

In 2014, he was honored as a Presidential Professor.

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Karen Marie Leighly, Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences

Karen Marie Leighly is an astrophysicist who studies active galactic nuclei: galaxies that radiate immense amounts of energy as matter spirals into the supermassive black hole at their core. Sometimes referred to as "quasi-stellar objects" or "quasars," these incandescent maws can be a thousand times as luminous as the entire Milky Way galaxy. They are at the heart of research in general relativity, cosmology and galaxy formation.

She has co-authored over 127 publications in the top astronomical journals, with almost 5,000 citations, 474 in the last year alone, and has brought in over $2.5 million in research funding.

However, numbers alone are not the only indication of her qualifications. The work of a superior researcher drives innovation that has impact beyond their own papers. An example of this is SIMBAL, software developed by Leighly and her team to analyze spectra from active galactic nuclei.

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Kash Barker, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Gallogly College of Engineering 

University professors are often phenomenal teachers, excellent mentors, and outstanding researchers, who present great visibility through their professional service and leadership. Kash Barker is among a very rare group of academicians who combine all these virtues together in a single package – as a great teacher, outstanding researcher, excellent mentor, and an outstanding steward and leader of industrial and systems engineering profession.

He has made great efforts to partner with international institutions, students and researchers and to bring significant visibility and worldwide acclaim to the School, the College and the University of Oklahoma, and his students are placed as faculty members at major institutions across the globe.

In his more than 11 years of service as an OU faculty member, Barker has surpassed the outstanding records of many senior faculty members at highly prestigious universities worldwide. His research program has built strong national and international collaborations that have been recognized with significant funding from both the NSF and federal mission agencies, and these have led to an impressive publication record and the recruitment of outstanding graduate students.

His teaching and mentorship of students have raised the bar regarding expectations of student learning and scholarship, and he has been critical in reshaping the School’s academic programs.

Further evidence of his teaching excellence is his consistently high teaching evaluations. ISE students have honored him with the School’s Outstanding Teaching Award seven years in a row. He also was honored with a Presidential Professorship in 2016.

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Barbara Fast, School of Music, Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts 

Barbara Fast is recognized by her colleagues as a compassionate and devoted teacher of national and international reputation and influence and as someone who has inspired and mentored generations of students in their pursuit of highly successful careers and meaningful contributions to the field of piano pedagogy.

She directs OU’s renowned Piano Pedagogy program – one of the largest, most active and most successful in the country. Through her mentorship and effective modeling, she not only trains outstanding piano pedagogues, but also models and encourages the highest standards of professionalism. Students leave the OU piano pedagogy program well-poised to follow in her footsteps, as evidenced by the many former students who have obtained prominent academic positions in prestigious piano pedagogy programs across the country.

Her students also have won numerous awards and produced significant publications. The OU collegiate chapter of the Music Teachers' National Association won the national Chapter of the Year award in 2017, 2009 and 2007 under her mentorship.

Among her many accomplishments, one that stands out as especially significant and impactful is her co-founding of the National Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy Forum (GP3) in 2000. The biennial national conference is quite influential in establishing standards of teaching in Group Piano classes, which are included in the core curriculum in every music school in the nation.

In recognition of her guidance and mentoring of students, Fast was the recipient of the Oklahoma Music Teacher of the Year award and OU's Irene and Julian Rothbaum Presidential Professor of Excellence in the Arts.

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Jeffrey F. Kelly, Department of Biology, College of Arts and Sciences

Jeffrey F. Kelly is one of OU’s leading innovators, having fostered the birth of “Aeroecology,” the study of how airborne life forms use and interact with other biotic and abiotic components of the lower atmosphere.

His innovative work has continually incorporated and tested new and valuable technologies – from stable isotopes to geotrackers to radar – toward exploring the little understood frontier of the biology of the atmosphere. Moreover, Aeroecology attacks a “wicked problem,” one that 1) arises from incomplete knowledge, 2) involves a variety of constituencies (from meteorologists to conservation biologists and crossing international boundaries), and 3) whose causes and solutions are interconnected with those of other problems (climate change, habitat destruction, conservation, agriculture).

Kelly has earned recognition from two international ornithology societies. He received the Van Tyne Award, was elected a fellow to the American Ornithologists Union, and was awarded an honorary lifetime membership to the Cooper Ornithological Society. At OU, he earned an OU Regents’ Award for Superior Research and Creative Activity in 2015 and a Vice President for Research award for interdisciplinary scholarship in 2016.

In addition, he has maintained a successful funding record, with large grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education, and other sources, helping to generate over $10 million in external funding, as well as working on six active proposals accounting for almost $5 million.

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Liesa L. Richter, College of Law

Liesa L. Richter, William J. Alley Professor of Law, has excelled in her capacity as a legal scholar and leader since her arrival at the College of Law in 2001 and has become an important voice in her area of Evidence, contributing to the top scholarly journals, as well to meaningful law reform initiatives.

For almost two decades, Richter has been studying the Federal Rules of Evidence, identifying problems in their content and application, and suggesting innovative reforms to fix those problems to make adjudication in the federal courts as fair and accurate as it can be. Her work has influenced an entire generation of judges and thought leaders, leading to her serving a critical role as the Academic Consultant to the United States Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence. Few evidence scholars of her generation have had this type of impact on the administration of justice in our federal courts.

Richter's scholarship routinely appears in top-ranked journals, including the highly ranked Columbia Law Review and, as a result of her outstanding research record, was invited to be a co-author of one of the most widely used Evidence textbooks in the country.

In 2016, she was appointed to serve as the sole Academic Consultant to the United States Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence. The Conference is the governing and policymaking body of the federal courts. As Academic Consultant to the Evidence Advisory Committee, she performs research to support the work of the Committee and her efforts and advice have had an impact on the rulemaking process.

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