Penn State Honoring 10 Graduate Teaching Assistants
March 23, 2000
University Park, Pa. — Penn State will honor 10 graduate teaching assistants with awards for outstanding teaching at an awards ceremony at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel on Sunday, April 9. The ceremony will begin at 1:30 p.m. in the President’s Hall.
The University-wide award is sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate Education and the Graduate School to recognize excellence in teaching by graduate students who have taught for at least two semesters within the past two years. Recipients receive a framed certificate and a $500 cash award.
The 2000 award winners and their areas of teaching are:
Gregory Colón Semenza, a doctoral student in English, has taught class sections in freshman composition and business writing, and writing for the humanities — a course he helped restructure and revitalize. He has also led specialized courses in British literature, Shakespeare, and a survey of the English literary tradition to 1798. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English from Rutgers University in 1995, and completed his master’s degree at Penn State in 1997.
Kate B. Douglass is in the foreign language acquisition doctoral program, and has had sole responsibility for teaching sections of beginning and accelerated French since 1997. She has previously earned membership in Alpha Kappa Delta, the international sociology honor society, and Pi Delta Phi, the national French honor society. She received a bachelor’s degree in French from The College of William and Mary in 1995 and continued her studies with a master’s degree from Penn State in 1998. She anticipates completing her doctoral work this November.
Nestor Z. Handzy, a doctoral student in mathematics, has been fully responsible for teaching math courses since 1996 to a wide array of students from both liberal arts and science disciplines, often together in the same class. Among these classes are finite mathematics, college algebra II and analytic geometry, calculus and vector analysis, and ordinary and partial differential equations.
Heather C. McCune Bruhn has been a graduate assistant in the Department of Art History since 1994. She has led discussion sections in a survey class on Western art, and has had sole responsibility for teaching a course in ancient to medieval art and an upper-level class in Romanesque and Gothic art. She earned two bachelor’s degrees — one in art history and the other in painting and printmaking — from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1993. Her doctoral work focuses on medieval art and architecture.
Brian J. Murphy, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering and a teaching assistant since 1991, has run laboratory sections of advanced electrical engineering classes in linear control systems, digital control systems, as well as an introductory electrical engineering course. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Temple University in 1993 and a master’s degree from Widener University in 1996. His Ph.D. thesis is titled "Control of Linear Parameter Varying Systems."
William L. Posnett is a retired captain and pilot in the U.S. Navy who is a teaching assistant in Penn State’s Department of Aerospace Engineering. His considerable real-world experience with the engineering of Naval aircraft helped him reestablish an upper-level course in flight test simulation. He has also taught preliminary aircraft design, and guided his class last spring to national recognition in the annual NASA/FAA General Aviation Design Competition.
Catherine Reed, a doctoral student in art history, has discussion sessions for introductory and intermediate survey courses in Western art, and has taught an entire advanced class on the art of the early Middle Ages. She is currently the sole instructor for a course on English art. Outside of the classroom, she presented a paper based on an independent study at the 1998 Middle Atlantic Symposium in the History of Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Christopher M. Reenock expects to complete his doctoral program in political science in May. He has taught courses in introduction to comparative politics and American national government, and has been an assistant instructor in 400-level political science courses. He received bachelor’s degrees in physics and political science from Moravian College, and earned a master’s degree in political science from Penn State in 1996. His Ph.D. work is in American politics and his dissertation is titled "Agency Design and Environmental Regulation: Evidence from the States."
Bradford J. Vivian, a Ph.D. candidate in speech communication, has been able to integrate critical, applied, and theoretical dimensions of communication in his teaching assignments. Since 1996, he has taught sections of effective speech — both public speaking and message evaluation — as well as introduction to rhetorical theory and argumentation. He has also instructed a continuing education class in persuasion skills for teachers, and currently has sole responsibility for teaching a course in persuasion.
Jennifer A. Zachman, who has been a teaching assistant in Spanish and English as a second language since 1994, has accumulated an outstanding grade-point average of 3.98 for her 82 credits of graduate work. During the 1997-98 academic year, she represented the Spanish department at its study abroad program in Salamanca, where she taught English as a second language to Spanish students while coordinating and supervising the study abroad program. At Penn State, she has taught all levels of Spanish at the undergraduate level.
