Faculty Awards

December 9, 2014

Outstanding Service: Matt Papanikolas

Matt has served with thoughtfulness, efficiency, and grace on numerous important departmental committees, chairing several of them. His service includes Subcommittee T, the Executive Committee, the Head Search Committee, the Postdoc Hiring Committee, and the Mathematics Awareness Month Committee. He sees what needs to be done and does it right. Outside the department, Matt has been active in organizing conferences, and he is the Number Theory editor for the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society.

Outstanding Service: Roger Smith

The department had a moving experience this year. The smooth execution of the move from Milner to Blocker could not have happened without Roger’s tireless and efficient work as Field Marshal. He accomplished with flying colors the tremendous and unenviable task of overseeing this complex nonlinear operation. Besides successfully accomplishing this mission, Roger continues as longtime chair of the Speakers Committee. He recently completed a stint on the editorial board of the journals of the London Mathematical Society.

Outstanding Teaching: Wolfgang Bangerth

Wolfgang’s excellent teaching is marked by creativity, originality, and dedication. For the popular course he developed on finite element methods in scientific computing, he created a library of professionally produced video lectures that are widely downloaded from YouTube. Students in all of his courses appreciate his communication skills, his interactive teaching style, and the time and energy he invests in students’ growth and development. He is an active and successful mentor and advisor of graduate students.

Outstanding Teaching: Tom Vogel

Tom has a long history of going the extra mile to ensure that students learn, understand, and enjoy mathematics. His hard work and effective teaching are recognized by consistently excellent student evaluations. Students write enthusiastically about Tom as being “inspirational” and “the best professor I’ve had at A&M.” He single-handedly developed extensive pedagogical materials for Math 309, Linear Algebra for Differential Equations. Last year, Tom chaired the department’s Teaching Committee, a reflection of the common knowledge that his own teaching is outstanding.