Breadcrumb
The honorific title College Teaching Professor of Distinction is reserved for senior instructors who have been exemplary teachers and members of the university community.
2022
![Christy Fillman](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/christy_l._fillman_headshot-cropped-02.jpg?itok=pCtBhp9B)
Christy Fillman
MOLECULAR, CELLULAR AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
Fillmanreceived her PhD in MCDB at CU Boulder, where her research focused on proteins involved in mRNA degradation. She began teaching in MCDB in fall 2007 and is a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s, which aims to get undergraduates interested in the biological sciences through hands-on learning opportunities.
Fillman teaches the Phage Genomics Lab, which provides students with an authentic research experience early in their college careers and the Introduction to Genetics course, which is required of all MCDB majors. To enhance student understanding of core concepts in genetics, she has developed and implemented many active-learning and group problem-solving activities.
As the departmental coordinator for Learning Assistant Program since 2017, she helps faculty implement peer academic support in large introductory courses furthering the academic goals of the MCDB department to incorporate active learning as an essential element in the curriculum.
![Pamela Harvey](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/pamela_harvey.jpg?itok=i0gRx0cn)
Pamela Harvey
MOLECULAR, CELLULAR AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
Harveyjoined the MCDB faculty in 2014. She completed a PhD in Neuroscience at Tufts University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 2009 before doing a postdoc withLeslie Leinwandat CU Boulder. Since joining the faculty, she has co-developed and teaches several lower- and upper-division course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) as well as a course that provides pedagogical training to undergraduate teaching assistants in these CUREs.
In addition to teaching, Harvey oversees an undergraduate research lab where students engage in year-long independent study projects that focus on understanding the genetic basis of complex adult-onset neurological diseases.
![Ruth Heisler](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/ruth_e_heisler.cc14-cropped.jpg?itok=Ye3H2406)
Ruth Heisler
INTEGRATIVE PHYSIOLOGY
Heisleris a teaching professor of distinction in the Department of Integrative Physiology with a strong interest in science education and promoting student success. Since joining the CU Boulder faculty in 1996, Heisler has been actively involved in teaching and designing curricula for a variety of courses and served as the department’s associate chair of undergraduate affairs from 2017 to 2021.
Her greatest contributions were steering the department through the many challenges of offering a complete curriculum during COVID semesters that supported both faculty and student needs; and undertaking a multi-year effort to update the integrative physiology curriculum to better support the interests of the growing number of majors and provide a more streamlined path to graduation.
Heisler has received the BFA Faculty Recognition Award and ASSETT Award of Excellence as an Outstanding Teacher for Technology. She is co-author of several educational books, manuals and programs. In her free time, she enjoys traveling with anyone who will join, good food with friends, and just hanging out with her husband and two teenage sons.
![John Keller](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/keller_photo_2020_crop-cropped.jpg?itok=wXe-O_tq)
John Keller
ASTROPHYSICAL AND PLANETARY SCIENCES, FISKE PLANETARIUM
Kelleris the director of Fiske Planetarium and a teaching professor of distinction in astrophysical and planetary sciences. Keller is a planetary scientist with research interests in occultations, astronomy education and teacher preparation. He is PI and Co-PI for multiple NASA and National Science Foundation-funded projects to get people interested and involved in space science.
Previously, Keller was professor emeritus from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where he directed the Center for Engineering, Science, and Mathematics Education and ran the STEM Teacher and Researcher (STAR) Program, which provides paid summer research experiences at national labs for aspiring science and math teachers.
After obtaining a BS in Biology and an MA in Education from Stanford University, Keller taught high school science in the Bay Area for five years. He completed an MS in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado and his PhD in Planetary Science at the University of Arizona where he worked for the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission.
![David Paradis](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/paradis_2-cropped.jpg?itok=9GFivAOw)
David Paradis
HISTORY
Born into a large family in Kentucky,Paradishad the opportunity to work in a variety of environments, including a pig farm, a monastery, a salt factory and various businesses as a software engineer. He was grateful for the opportunities that his family afforded him and felt a strong urge to give back at a young age.
By the age of 30, he decided to leave the software industry and to embrace a career in higher education. Teaching was always more than a job for him. It satisfied something deep inside him, Paradis said, and for that opportunity, he’s grateful to his family, colleagues, mentors and students.
2021
![Vicki Grove](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/vicki-grove-cropped.jpg?itok=TNuIKmrW)
Vicki Grove
GERMANIC AND SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
Grove is a Senior Instructor in the Russian Program. She received both her MAand PhDin Comparative Literature, with an emphasis on 19th-Century Russian literature, here at the University of Colorado. Her research interests include the fantastic and supernatural in Russian and other literatures, and those subjects related to her teaching: Russian folklore, culture, fairy talesand epic narrative. She has presented papers on the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Mikhail Lermontov, and chaired panels on Slavic folklore.
Vicki is also co-director of the Russian, East European, and Central Asian (REECA) Heritage Camp for Adoptive Families. With volunteers from Russian, Kazakh, Ukrainianand other members of the Denver community, as well as from CU's Russian Program and its majors, this camp offers a unique opportunity for children to not only learn about the culture of their native countries, but also to develop a sense of pride in their heritage, and to participate in a community of fellow adoptees.
![D. Brett King](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/brett-king-cropped.jpg?itok=0UHFL2fo)
D. Brett King
PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE
2020
![Teresa E. Foley](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/foley_te_-_cropped.jpg?itok=q0bvQMRK)
Teresa E. Foley
INTEGRATIVE PHYSIOLOGY
Teresa E. Foley earned her PhD in physiology and neuroscience from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2009 and joined the faculty in integrative physiology in 2011.
She teaches a broad range of upper-division Integrative Physiology courses, including Introduction to Epidemiology, Immunology, Endocrinology, and Exercise Physiology. Foley also developed and coordinated laboratory courses in Cell Physiology and Human Physiology and played an integral role in developing the curriculum for the Undergraduate Certificate in Public Health. She has taught both small and large enrollment courses within and outside her expertise, receiving student ratings that are among the highest in the department. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Foley serves as a department education specialist who works closely with integrative physiology faculty to implement evidence-based practices in curriculum design and assessment. She also participates in the Teaching Quality Framework Initiative on campus to promote and study the use of scholarly approaches to teaching evaluation.
Among Foley’s honors are the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in STEM Education, the Best Should Teach Gold Award, and the Boulder Faculty Assembly Excellence Award in Teaching and Pedagogy.
![Yumiko Matsunaga](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/yumiko_matsunaga_pc001_-_cropped-02.jpg?itok=DeWUBeE0)
Yumiko Matsunaga
ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CIVILIZATIONS
Yumiko Matsunaga earned her Ph.D. in Japanese and minored in second language acquisition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012. In 2011 she joined the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations at CU Boulder as a senior instructor and Japanese language coordinator. Since then, she has contributed to Japanese language education at CU Boulder, and as a result the enrollment in Japanese language courses has significantly increased. The development of Japanese placement tests and Matsunaga’s guidance of the Japanese language teaching staff were a large part of her success. She has taught all levels of Japanese language courses as well as Japanese Sociolinguistics, Business Japanese, and Japanese Pedagogy courses. Additionally, Matsunaga has held pedagogical workshops and interdepartmental microteaching sessions with fellow language coordinators from other foreign language departments. Her research is focused on issues that foreign language learners face, such as identity construction, participation framework, and community building. In 2017 and 2020, she published book chapters that research foreign language housing, a form of special university housing for language learners.
![Lon Abbott](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/lon-photocropped.jpg?itok=oWmkuOxx)
Lon Abbott
GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Lon Abbott earned his PhD in earth sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1993. He subsequently held positions at Prescott College and Red Rocks Community College before coming to CU Boulder in 2007.
While growing up in Boulder, Abbottfell in love with mountains; he spent every possible moment running, climbing, skiingor kayaking in them. So, when attending University of Utah for his BSc., majoring in geology and geophysics was a natural choice. His love of mountains and desire to understand how geologic processes form and sculpt them has fueled his research, from graduate study of the world’s youngest mountain range, in Papua New Guinea, to his current work exploring the evolution of the Colorado Rockies, Great Plains, and Colorado Plateau. Together, Colorado’s three geographic provinces constitute one of the world’s most enigmatic tracts of high terrain; it is a joy striving, in collaboration with talented undergraduate researchers, to translate the stories told by the region’s rocks.
Abbott is equally passionate to share with others his love of the Earth through formal and informal teaching, writing, public presentations, and field trips. He has authored three geology books and over 60 articles written for broad audiences.
2019
![Heidi Day](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/heidi_day_headshot.jpg?itok=KVrQ0A0w)
Heidi Day
PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE
Heidi Day earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge, England in 1994. After graduation, she researched the neural circuitry of stress-related responses, continuing at CU Boulder starting in 1999. She started teaching full-time in 2014, after the neuroscience undergraduate degree was approved. Her research background has significantly influenced her teaching. She developed and teaches the Lab Techniques in Neuroscience course that all neuroscience majors take. This course guides students through the complete experimental process, including design, execution and write up of the experiment in the style of a Journal of Neuroscience paper. A focus of her Neurobiology of Stress class is to teach students how to interpret data in research papers. Outside of the classroom, she has focused on the continued development of neuroscience undergraduate education, by serving on the Honors Council, as faculty advisor for the neuroscience club, on department committees for undergraduate education, and as the department co-coordinator for the Learning Assistant Program.
![Andrea Feldman](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/andrea_feldman.jpg?itok=DpJCQ9V9)
Andrea Feldman
PROGRAM FOR WRITING AND RHETORIC
Andrea Feldman received her PhDin Cognitive Linguistics, specializing in Language Acquisition, from CU Boulder in 1998, and joined the CU faculty in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric the following year. She holds two BA’s in Spanish and Linguistics from Cornell University. After serving as a Fulbright in Asia fellow in Japan, she received two MA’s in Linguistics and Japanese from Cornell University.She directed the Washington Academy of Language Center at the University of Puget Sound Seattle Campus for seven years prior to moving to Boulder.
Her academic interests include first and second language acquisition, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and cross-cultural rhetoric. Her publications and national conference presentations are in the areas of linguistics, second-language writing, and cross-cultural rhetoric. Her research focuses on global literacy and second language writing. She is interested in building community among monolingual and multilingual writers. In addition, Feldman works in the area of service learning and civic engagement. Specifically, she conducts workshops and conferences on immigrant integration and international students, efforts to connect workers, students, and faculty on campus. Current research focuses on digital literacy especially as it relates to first and second language acquisition.
She initiated and continues to coordinate the Program for Writing and Rhetoric’s ESL program in scientific and professional writing. In addition to teaching multilingual and professional writing courses in the PWR, Andrea teaches Honors writing courses and has served on over 50 honors thesis committees. Active in faculty governance, she has served as Boulder Faculty Assembly Diversity Committee Chair, Chair of the Chancellor’s Committee on Race and Ethnicity, and Foundations of Excellence Diversity Committee Chair.Feldman received the Boulder Faculty Assembly Award for Excellence in Teaching and Pedagogy in 2018.
![Susan Hendrickson](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/department_of_chemistry_and_biochemistry_hs_pc038-cropped.jpg?itok=dEfF6y59)
Susan Hendrickson
BIOCHEMISTRY
Susan Hendrickson received her BS in Chemistry and Mathematics from Bates College (1985). After teaching at her high school in Mississippi for two years, she pursued graduate work and earned a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Colorado State University (1997). She served as a postdoctoral assistant at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for two years before beginning her college teaching career at Davidson College. In 2001, she moved to North Carlina State University where she was a General Chemistry Lecturer and the General Chemistry Lab Coordinator. She returned to Colorado in 2007 and joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder as a Senior Instructor.
While at CU, she has been active in several different areas in addition to teaching large sections of general chemistry. She has been an instructor with the CU Precollegiate Development Program, teaching beginning and advanced chemistry classes to high school students in the summer (2008 – 2019). She has also been active with the Learning Assistant Alliance, serving on the Resources Subcommittee since 2015 and working with Learning Assistants in her courses since 2008. She has served as the faculty adviser for the CU Chapter of Global Brigades since 2010, including participating in six week-long brigades with students to Central America to provide medical and dental relief and to participate in public health projects. Most recently she became a CU Wizard in 2019, allowing her to entertain and inspire young scientists with an interactive show about batteries.
Her teaching has been recognized by the Marinus G. Smith Award from the CU Parents Association for “Making a Difference” (2016), the President’s Diversity Award Commendation for Adaptations of General Chemistry Labs for Visually Impaired Students (2014), and the CU ASSETT Award of Excellence as an Outstanding Teacher for Technology in Teaching (2013, 2014).
![Saskia Hintz](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/hintz_saskia.jpg?itok=6Op4Luo6)
Saskia Hintz
GERMANIC AND SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
Saskia Hintz holds a teaching certificate ("Staatsexamen") in German, Danishand Education from Pädagogische Hochschule Flensburg/Germany and a PhDin German from New York University. She joined the CU Boulder faculty in 2007. Her teaching experience includes language classes on all levels of instruction as well as culture and literature classes and Business German.
In her research she explores innovative approaches to teaching literature, culture, and particularly creative writing and visual art in the foreign language classroom and she has organized and presented workshops at the ACTFL/AATG, CCFLT and NECTFL conferences as well as for the Goethe Institute’s Trainer Networks Chicago and San Francisco. Her additional teaching and research interests are children's literature, radio-plays, poetry and short films and their use in the German classroom as well as creative uses for new technologies. Other teaching and teacher training topics include migration, social justice and the environment.
She directs the regional Goethe Institut Examination Center housed in the department of GSLL and is a tester of the Goethe Institute exams Goethe-Zertifikat B1, B2 and C1. She also is a Professional Development Consultant for the American Association of Teachers of German.
![Tina Pittman-Wagers](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/tina_outside_cjw_photo-cropped.jpg?itok=nBZaodk0)
Tina Pittman-Wagers
PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE
Tina Pittman-Wagers earned her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (PsyD) from the University of Denver in 1993and started teaching at University of Colorado Boulder in 2001. As a clinical psychologist, the focus of her undergraduate teaching has also been on clinically-oriented classes. Over the years, she has taught courses in abnormal psychology, evidence-based psychotherapy and women’s mental health. She also teaches and supervises Clinical PhDstudents as they learn and implement various evidence-based treatments as part of their clinical training.
Outside of the classroom, Pittman-Wagers is engaged in service and research focused on campus mental health and wellness, the integration of wellness efforts in the classroom, women’s mental health, and psychosocial issues related to Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, a rare type of heart attack primarily experienced by younger women. Pittman-Wagers is also a research associate with the Renee Crown Wellness Institute.
![Karen Ramirez](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/staff_karen_ramirez.jpg?itok=flGiqJ1c)
Karen Ramirez
WOMEN & GENDER STUDIES
Karen Ramirez is Assistant Director for Humanities & Arts in theMiramontes Arts and Sciences Program (MASP), which supports underserved students in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Director of theCU Dialogues Program,which facilitates dialogues in CU classes across the curriculum.Ramirez earned her PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003, with a focus on western American and Indigenous literatures. She completed dialogue training through Essential Partners, the Kettering Foundation, and the National Intergroup Dialogue Institute. She began teaching at CU Boulder in 2000 and worked for the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, the Sewall Residential Academic Program, and the Center of the American West before moving into her current positions.
As an Assistant Director in MASP Ramirez mentors 50-60 undergraduate MASP students each year, teaches courses in literature, writing, research and inclusive practices, and helps direct MASP’s summer bridge programs. Ramirez’s current scholarship focuses onpedagogical practices that advance educational equity, particularly dialogue as a pedagogy. Drawing on herfoundation in dialogism and narrative study, her work theorizes and studies dialogue experiences as an engaged and inclusive form of learning across cultural perspectives. Her dialogue-related work includes serving as Co-PI on a multi-yearSpencer Foundation Civics Measures research grantto develop measurements for assessing dialogic and deliberative engagement across difference in educational settings. She has published several articles on dialogue as a pedagogical practice.
Her earlier body of research and publishing considers narrative mappings of place in 19th/20th Century western American literature and how these narrative mappings dialogically intersect with contemporary public memory of western places. She is the author ofReading HelenHunt Jackson’sRamonaand haspublished on Indigenous participation in the Ramona Outdoor Play as a form of cultural continuation through public performance that dialogically negotiates with an embedded, colonialist narrative of Southern California. She has also published on narrative mappings in Willa Cather’s novels. She co-presided over the Western Literature Association in 2008, bringing their conference to Boulder, and continues to serve as a reviewer for the journal,Western American Literature.
Ramirez has received several awards recognizing her effort to put into practice her scholarly interest in educational equity, including a 2018 Boulder Faculty Assembly Award for Leadership and Service and two student-nominated Marinus Smith Awards for her positive impact on CU undergraduate students (in 2007 and 2021). Under her direction, the CU Dialogues Program has been recognized with aChancellor’s Committee on Race and Ethnicity Diversity Service Recognition Award (2015) and President’s Diversity Award (2013).
2018
![Priscilla Craven](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/head_shot.jpg?itok=dls3kWe0)
Priscilla Craven
FRENCH AND ITALIAN
Priscilla Craven teaches Italian language, literatureand art history at CU Boulder and abroad.She received her MAin Italian from Middlebury, and a second MAin art history from the University of Colorado.She is the recipient of a multitude of teaching awards, which include the BFA Teaching and Pedagogy award, the Best Should Teach Gold award, the Marinus Smith award, and the French and Italian Department Teaching award.Craven has directed and developed multiple summer Study Abroad programs in Rome, and has been essential in working with semester-long Study Abroad programs in Florence and Perugia. She frequently travels to Italy for study, presentations, researchand collaboration with Italian colleagues.Craven gave a TEDx talk in the Medici palace in Florence for Chancellor Phil DiStefano and the CU global ambassadors in 2016.She is known for conducting lectures in museums, amidst Roman ruins, and from Renaissance gardens and palaces, and makes any space into a classroom.Vanderbilt University, her undergraduate alma mater, endowed a scholarship in her name in 2006, given yearly to exceptional students of the Humanities, allowing them to graduate debt-free.
![Robert Nauman](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/img_0610.jpeg?itok=UcU17GX7)
Robert Nauman
ART AND ART HISTORY
Robert Nauman earned his PhD in art and architectural history from the University of New Mexico in 1999 and joined the CU Boulder faculty in 2002.His primary area of research is architectural history from the 19th century to the present. His book On the Wings of Modernism: the United States Air Force Academy was nominated for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award.Additional publications have addressed specific architects, such as Gertrude Kerbis and Walter Netsch, as well as preservation issues as they relate to modern architecture and design.Nauman also coordinates the art and art history department’s museum internship program with area museums.Nauman served on the Test Development Committee for the Advanced Placement Art History exam for seven years, and oversaw the scoring of all AP art history exams administered in the United States during that time.
Nauman has served on the national Boards of the Society of Architectural Historians and Docomomo, and on the Board of Boulder’s Chautauqua Association. He was appointed by Governor Polis and History Colorado to serve on the Colorado Historic Preservation Review Board to review nominations to the National Register of Historic Places and the Colorado State Register. He is a frequent advisor for projects at the United States Air Force Academy.
2017
![Anne Dougherty](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/dsc_1859_0.jpg?itok=R1mR8d2b)
Anne Dougherty
APPLIED MATHEMATICS
Anne Dougherty earned her PhD in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 1994 and joined the CU Boulder faculty that year. While at CU Boulder, her work has focused on challenging students to develop their full mathematical potential. This work has included serving as associate chair of the Department of Applied Mathematics and being one of the primary faculty advisors for applied math majors. She is the departmental representative for the Goldwater Scholarship and has helped to guide many students toward successful applications. Dougherty is also excited to advise teams for the annual international Mathematical Contest in Modeling.CU Boulder has had many winning teams over the years.
Dougherty has received several teaching and service awards both on the CU campus and nationally. She holds the J.R. Woodhull/Logicon Teaching Professorship of Applied Mathematics. She has been a co-PI or PI on three NSF grants, primarily focused on teaching and educational infrastructure. Most recently, she assisted with the development of the statistics and data science major, one of the newer majors on campus.
![Michael Dubson](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/michael-dubson-cropped-03.jpg?itok=iyvCciWv)
Michael Dubson
PHYSICS
![Rolf Norgaard](/artsandsciences/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/callout/rolf-norgaard-cropped.jpg?itok=oU3u1E90)
Rolf Norgaard
PROGRAM FOR WRITING AND RHETORIC
Rolf Norgaard is a faculty member in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, where he also serves as Associate Director for Upper-Division Writing. He received his BAfrom Wesleyan University in 1974, and following a DAAD Fellowship at the University of Munich, pursued graduate studies in Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where he received his PhDin 1982. After serving as lead writer/editor at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS), he joined the CU Boulder faculty in 1986. He played a leading role in the university writing program, and facilitated its transition to the current Program for Writing and Rhetoric. He developed and currently directs the interdisciplinary certificate in writing.
Norgaard is the author of three books, 14 articles and book chapters, and has presented at some forty national conferences. He has published widely on rhetorical dimensions of writing, critical information literacy, technical communication and design, science and society, writing across and in the disciplines, and writing as a vehicle for civic engagement and ethical inquiry. He also teaches in the Honors Program and has served on more than 80 honors thesis committees.
Active in college and campus faculty governance, Norgaard has served on the Arts and Sciences Council and the Boulder Faculty Assembly, and on the BFA Executive Committee, in addition to chairing several key college and campus task forces. He has sought to improve the professional standing of instructor-rank faculty, and has championed their role in helping CU Boulder achieve “T1 at the R1”—first-rate undergraduate teaching at a research institution.
Norgaard has received both the BFA Excellence Award in Teaching and Pedagogy (2006), and the BFA Excellence Award in Leadership and Service (2014).