President’s Distinguished Award Winners: Applauding Some of the Best Faculty Work on Campus
Staff, faculty and students have the opportunity to applaud some of the best work faculty members are doing on campus, with the presentation of the President’s Distinguished Award Winners at Convocation.
Recipients in three categories were Dr. James Drennen III, Dr. Connie Moss, Darryl Ozimek and Dr. Jeffrey Evanseck. Details about their awards and their work follow.
Excellence in Scholarship
Dr. James K. Drennen III, associate dean of research and graduate programs in the Mylan School of Pharmacy/Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and holder of the Noble J. Dick Endowed Chair in Academic Leadership, has focused his research on the manufacture and analysis of pharmaceuticals. He has pioneered the use of near-infrared spectroscopy to assess the quality of pharmaceuticals. The work of his team has attracted industrial contracts and collaboration with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Drennen also serves as the lead faculty representative for Duquesne in the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology and Education, a nonprofit consortium of leading universities in pharmaceutical science and engineering. He has helped the group to attract a recent $35 million contract from the FDA. Drennen has provided a variety of training programs to the FDA with his graduate students and faculty colleagues. He is a noted expert among academic, industry and government circles.
The founder and chief editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Pharmaceutical Innovation, Drennen is currently researching methods for monitoring and controlling pharmaceutical manufacturing processes.
Excellence in Teaching
Dr. Connie M. Moss, an associate professor in the School of Education, serves as director of the Center for Advancing the Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) in the Department of Foundations and Leadership. She is the principal architect of CASTL’s theoretical framework and online learning programs. Named Duquesne’s Teacher of the Year by Omicron Delta Kappa in 2002, Moss also has received the peer-selected Center for Teaching Excellence’s Creative Teaching Award. Her research interests focus on studying teaching and learning, with specific emphasis on teachers’ assumptions and their implications.
Moss’ recent book on formative assessment, Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom, appears on a short list of recommended professional development resources in support of President Obama’s Common Core Standards Initiative to improve our nation’s schools. Based upon research she has and is conducting with Pittsburgh area teachers, it has been recognized repeatedly for its clarity in translating complex research findings on effective, classroom-friendly assessment practices.
A cornerstone member of the University Core Committee, Moss has participated in the redesign of the teacher education program and undergraduate educational psychology courses. Before joining Duquesne’s faculty, she spent more than 20 years as a public school teacher and special educator in Alaska and Pennsylvania. Besides having served as a curriculum monitor for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Moss maintains teacher and superintendent certifications and continues to consults to school districts, educational organizations and educational agencies.
Darryl J. Ozimek, an instructor of physics, was selected by his colleagues for the 2011 Bayer School award for Excellence in Teaching. He is actively engaged in course development for electronics and the life-science based physics laboratories, but a primary responsibility is teaching physics core course for non-science majors. Ozimek delivers his classroom messages with an average of five demonstrations a week for classes of 50 to 100-plus students, ranging from energy and motion, to electricity and magnetism, to optics and waves. He has created many of these demonstrations or extensively modified and adapted them from previously published demonstrations with the investment of much preparation and significant effort.
Ozimek started his career in secondary education as a physics, practical science and astronomy teacher at Cambridge Springs High School in Pennsylvania. While in graduate school, he conducted research in physics education, focusing on how students learn, retain and transfer their trigonometry knowledge to their physics courses. The Bayer representative on the Academic Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee, Ozimek expertly uses assessment to enhance student learning. He also contributes to the Center for Teaching Excellence.
Excellence in Service to the Mission
Dr. Jeffrey D. Evanseck, a chemistry professor in the Bayer School and the Lauritis Chair of Teaching and Technology, was named one of two 2010-11 Teachers of the Year by Duquesne’s chapter of Omicron Delta Kappa. His computational and theoretical biophysical and physical organic chemistry research program is based on four areas of expertise involving molecular dynamic situations, quantum mechanical methodologies and algorithm development.
Selected by Bayer School colleagues for the Award for Excellence in Service, Evanseck not only provides service to students in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, but has stepped into the role as mentor to the American Chemical Society Student Members, encouraging their aggressive agenda to promote science education in the community through participation in such events as National Chemistry Week and SciTech events at the Carnegie Science Center.
Evanseck also initiated a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at Duquesne and is now in the eighth year of receiving these competitive grants. He has established partnerships that enable significant numbers of underserved and minority students to benefit from rich research experiences at Duquesne, which have led many of these students to pursue advanced graduate studies. Evanseck also is involved in the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science, which sponsors activities for students in grades 7-12. In his service to the University, Evanseck has served as chair of the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Committee and co-chair of the Educational Technology Committee as well as chair of the Center for Computational Sciences and its interdisciplinary initiatives.
In addition, 25-year faculty members recognized at the Convocation were:
- Dr. Bruce Beaver, Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences
- Dr. Patricia A. Keys, Mylan School of Pharmacy
- Dr. Joan S. Lockhart, School of Nursing
- Dr. Gregorio C. Martin, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
- William Purse, Mary Pappert School of Music
- M. Diana Sasso, Gumberg Library.