Five CEAS faculty and staff members won 2008 CEAS Faculty and Staff Awards. WMU Provost Tim Greene, who initiated the annual awards two years ago when he was the CEAS dean, presented this year’s awards to Dr. Peter Parker and Dr. Margaret Joyce, Dept. of Paper Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Imaging (PCI) professors; Slobodan Urdarevik, Dept. of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (IME) faculty specialist II; Dr. Zijiang James Yang, Dept. of Computer Science (CS) assistant professor, and Abraham Poot, the CEAS technical specialist for IME and MAE.
“Every year we recognize another set of faculty and staff who are truly outstanding," Greene said.
Parker, the 2008 CEAS Outstanding Educator, has been teaching WMU chemical engineering classes since 1997. He is an advisor to the chemical engineering program, and he incorporates WMU’s “designation as student-centered” into both teaching and advising. His teaching methods evolve from combining new techniques with those that withstood “the test of time.” Parker’s background includes a University of Rochester BS in chemical engineering, a University of Pittsburgh MBA, and University of Michigan MSE and Ph.D. in chemical engineering. His research interests are process modeling and simulation, tissue manufacturing, and engineering ethics. He’s a longtime member of the Faculty Senate, chairs the Academic Information and Technology Council, and is a member of WMU's Ethic Center advisory board.
Winning the 2008 CEAS Outstanding New Educator, Urdarevik, IME 1420 Engineering Graphics lead instructor, teaches three mass lecture sessions of up to 120 students and coordinates up to 14 student teaching assistants (TAs). His credentials include two U.S. patents and three U.S. patents pending for his teaching strategies.
Each semester Urdarevik coordinates a design competition for the more than 300 students enrolled in IME 1420 and an annual Best TA competition. He is an official reviewer of several graphics text books. Before coming to WMU in 2003, he taught at Humber College in Toronto. He has a mechanical engineering master’s degree from the University of Skopje in Macedonia.
Joyce, the 2008 CEAS Outstanding Researcher, has assumed major roles in securing over one million dollars in external funding through grants and contracts for diverse projects that include bolstering homeland security through use of RFID-radio frequency identification and developing a new coating measurement system in the foundry industry. A recognized leader in the coating industry, she is widely published and has coordinated many conferences. With 10 other CEAS faculty, she recently started CAPE [Center for Advancement of Printed Electronics] for multidisciplinary research.
Yang, whose primary research interest is computer system reliability, won the 2008 CEAS Outstanding New Researcher. He was recently awarded a $400,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for research on multithreaded program verification. He has also been awarded five other external research grants since 2003. Yang’s papers have been published in top computer science journals and conferences, and he recently won the prestigious 2008 ACM TODAES Best Paper Award. The IEEE senior member is an inventor with five U.S. patents and five patents pending. Yang came to WMU in 2003 after earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Winning the 2008 CEAS Outstanding Staff Award, Poot, the IME\MAE lab coordinator, supports computer and electrical equipment design, assembly, and maintenance. Since 2001, Poot has served as project adviser of the WMU Sunseeker Solar Car teams, which have placed in several North American Solar Challenge competitions and have won both design and sportsmanship awards. For his support in many areas, including tribology, thermal systems, aerodynamics, biomechanics, foundry, and automotive laboratories, Poot was recently honored with the 2008 WMU Distinguished Service Award.
The winners of this year’s awards were selected by a committee of last year’s winners from nominations made by faculty, administrators, and emeriti. These five 2008 award winners will serve as the selection committee for those who win next year’s awards.
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