Ewing Wins Graduate Faculty Teaching Award

4-3-97

University Park, Pa. --- Andrew G. Ewing, professor of chemistry, is the 1997 winner of Penn State's Graduate Faculty Teaching Award.

The award recognizes tenured faculty members who have excelled both in teaching at the graduate level and in supervising thesis work of graduate students. He will be honored at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 6, at the Faculty/Staff Awards Program at the Penn State Scanticon Conference Hotel.

A specialist in analytical chemistry and neurochemistry, Dr. Ewing helped develop Penn State's current course structure for analytical chemistry graduate students shortly after joining the faculty in 1984. From 1990 to 1995 he was his department's Assistant Head for Graduate Education and instituted new procedures that doubled the annual number of applications from domestic students. Currently, he is co-director of the Neuroscience Option in the new Integrative Bioscience Graduate Degree Program where he is beginning a new area of improving graduate education.

In detailing his Philosophy of Teaching Dr. Ewing wrote, "One of my major goals is to create a sense of excitement for chemical research among my students." He fosters this excitement and hones his students' communications skills through a program of monthly "Marathon" meetings in his home, weekly topic meetings on campus and "brainstorming" mini-meetings when and where the situation warrants. These meetings are often recalled by former students as providing some of their "most valued" skills.

The meetings combined with Dr. Ewing's personal interaction and attention to each student make for a highly productive research group that depends on collective brainstorming and interaction while encouraging independence. Dr. Ewing's research group of 15 to 18 graduate and undergraduate students produce about 14 to 16 publications per year while opening new areas of analytical chemistry and neurochemistry.

Dr. Ewing also has been honored with the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Swedish Medical Council Visiting Scientist Fellowship and the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal in Physical Sciences and Engineering.

He is a cum laude graduate of St. Lawrence University and earned his doctorate at Indianna University, Bloomington.

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Contact: Christy Rambeau (814) 865-7517 (office) cmr7@psu.edu