Illinois State University will honor 15 faculty members for teaching and research during the Founders Day Convocation on Thursday, Feb. 17, at 2 p.m. in the Bone Student Center Brown Ballroom.
Rajeev Goel of the Economics department and Anu Gokhale of the Technology department are the 2010 Outstanding University Researchers. The Outstanding University Research Award goes to faculty whose research has been acknowledged by their peers in the U.S. and internationally.
Tim Fredstrom of the School of Music and Gary Creasey of the Psychology department are the 2010-11 Outstanding University Teachers. Carol Lind of the English department is the Category 2 Outstanding University Teacher, a classification for non-tenured faculty. The Outstanding University Teacher Award is given to faculty whose teaching accomplishments are unusually significant and meritorious among their colleagues.
Research Initiative Award recipients include Winfred Avogo, Sociology and Anthropology; Sunil Chebolu, Mathematics; John Kostelnick, Geography-Geology; Jamie Perry, Communication Sciences and Disorders; Steve Mertens, Curriculum and Instruction; and Anne Cox, Kinesiology and Recreation. The Research Initiative Award is given to faculty members who have initiated a promising research agenda early in their academic careers.
Teaching Initiative Award recipients include Hedda Meaden-Kaplansky, Special Education; Chris Grieshaber, Health Sciences; Maria Moore, Communication; and Jennifer Friberg, Communication Sciences and Disorders. The Teaching Initiative Award is given to faculty members who have shown considerable promise in teaching early in their careers.
Goel joined Illinois State in 1989 after receiving his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Houston. His research interests are applied microeconomics, including economics of technical change, industrial organization, Internet economics, entrepreneurship and tobacco economics. Goel’s current scholastic interests include international trends in tobacco consumption and regulation and determinants of cross-country corruption. His recent contributions to the tobacco economics literature exceed those of virtually every other scholar working on these issues globally, according to Frank Chaloupka, a distinguished professor of economics at the University of Illinois-Chicago and director of the Institute for Health Research and Policy’s Health Policy Center. Goel’s contributions to at least three distinct areas of economics have been acknowledged by Paul Gregory, a Hoover Institution Research Fellow, as unusual in the discipline of economics where most researchers typically focus in relatively narrow fields of study. Goel has published two books, 86 articles and several book chapters. His research is heavily cited and routinely appears in prestigious and high-quality peer-reviewed outlets, with the volume of his publications earning him a spot in the top 400 economists in the world.
Gokhale’s collaborative research has focused on female and minority participation in technical areas within science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Participation by underrepresented groups in these career areas has become a hallmark of her work. Gokhale has had her research disseminated in many diverse engineering and educational research journals such as the International Journal of Science Education, Journal of College Science Teaching, Journal of Information Management, Journal for Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, Journal of the Communications Network and Journal of Environmental Management. She presents regularly at national and international conferences, and her telecommunications textbook is used by more than 20 universities and was recently translated into Chinese.
Gokhale has made several invited international presentations, most recently in Shanghai, China, and Mumbai, India. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct research and teach at two universities in India. Gokhale has an upcoming chapter, Collaborative Learning and Critical Thinking, which will be included in the next volume of the Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning.
Creasey joined the Psychology department in 1989. He has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses; most of his undergraduate students are teacher education majors. Creasey has supervised a number of thesis and dissertation projects and is currently the chairperson of the Illinois State University Urban Teacher Preparation Steering Committee and assistant director of the TEACHER+PLUS grant, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, for which he mentors faculty members as they redesign their courses with an urban education focus, develops strands of classes that can be taken by teacher candidates interested in pursuing urban teaching careers and conducts assessment/evaluation work on the progress of these students. He authored the textbook, Research Methods in Lifespan Development, has received a number of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) grants and has published several papers in SoTL outlets.
Creasey’s teaching philosophy stresses the importance of forming strong connections with students and infusing culture and diversity in the curriculum, with a strong focus on ethics and social justice. He has published a number of papers on the topic and has developed a measure that taps student-instructor connectedness. Creasey has included active learning assignments in his classes that allow students to experience these contexts via immersion trips to high-need Chicago schools and neighborhoods. He is also chairperson of the Institutional Review Board and has won two awards from the Illinois State Student Educational Association.
Fredstrom, assistant director of the School of Music, joined the faculty in 2003 after teaching music in the public schools for 10 years. He has taught courses in graduate and undergraduate music education and general education as well as conducted choral ensembles. Fredstrom has served as an academic advisor to choral music education majors, Presidential Scholar mentor, residence hall mentor and faculty advisor to several School of Music student organizations. He believes teaching is at its best when students and faculty learn together and from each other, and where all individuals involved commit to bringing their best preparation and thinking to the community of learners. Fredstrom thinks it is critical that teachers expect high levels of achievement from students. From 2006 to 2008, he served as Faculty in Residence in the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTLT), where he conducted workshops on instructional effectiveness. Fredstrom continues to facilitate the Reinvent Your Course workshop each summer for CTLT.
Fredstrom has presented numerous conference sessions and public school teacher in-service institutes on instructional effectiveness and clarity. He is a prior recipient of the University Teaching Initiative and University Service Initiative awards.
Lind earned her bachelor’s degree in art education and her master’s and doctoral degrees in English Studies from Illinois State. She taught classes in composition while completing her graduate degrees and, upon receiving her doctorate in 2007, began teaching full time as an non-tenure track faculty member in the Department of English. Lind has taught a variety of classes for the department, including British literature, introduction to English Studies, medieval literature, growth and structure of the English language, and introduction to literary genres.
Outside the classroom, Lind is actively involved in The Old English Study Group and serves as faculty advisor for the Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority and for the Quidditch team. Her teaching philosophy is built upon the firm conviction that passion is contagious. Lind uses humor to build community and to help students become comfortable enough in the classroom to be willing to “play” with the subject matter – whether it be acting out the Norman Conquest of England (complete with swords and crowns and horned helmets) in the History of English class, or doing an American Idol version of Shakespearean sonnets in British Literature. In her philosophy, this sort of play helps students open up to the often very difficult subject matter, while encouraging the collaborative learning and sense of discovery that fosters scholarly passion. While in graduate school, Lind won the English Department’s Taimi Maria Ranta Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Ph.D. Candidate, and she has been named one of the Panhellenic Association Outstanding Professors in 2009 and 2010.
