Nine faculty honored with Outstanding Teaching Awards
The UNO Alumni Association celebrated the 19th year of its Alumni Outstanding Teaching Awards program when it presented the honor to nine faculty members during the UNO Faculty Honors Convocation April 16. Association President Lee Denker presented the awards, established in 1997 to honor distinguished teaching in the classroom.
Peer committees in UNO college chose recipients, each of whom received a $1,000 award. Denker presented recipients with commemorative plaques during the convocation reception, hosted in the Thompson Alumni Center. With the 2015 awards the association has issued $167,000 through the program.
Brief descriptions of recipients follow.
2015 AOTA Recipients
Robert Blair, School of Public Administration, College of Public Affairs & Community Service
Douglas Derrick, School of Interdisciplinary Informatics, College of Information Science & Technology
Alan Gift, Chemistry, College of Arts & Sciences
Angie Hodge, Mathematics, College of Arts & Sciences
Wilma Kuhlman, Teacher Education, College of Education
Paul Landow, Political Science, College of Arts & Sciences
Holly Miller, School of Communication, College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media
Erin Pleggenkuhle-Miles, Marketing & Management, College of Business Administration
Yaoqing (Lamar) Yang, Electrical & Computer Engineering, UNL College of Engineering, Omaha campus
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Robert Blair, School of Public Administration
Robert Blair, an associate professor of public administration and director of urban studies, has taught at UNO since 1989. Blair’s research and teaching interests include public policy, state and local government management, urban and rural development, and program implementation. He directs the local management program in the MPA program and works regularly with city managers and municipal clerks in Nebraska. The International City/County Management Association in 2104 recognized Blair for his contributions to the field of professional local government management. Many of his former students are city administrators around the country. Blair has two UNO degrees, a BA (1973) and MPA (1975). He earned his doctorate in public administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1996.
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Douglas Derrick, School of Interdisciplinary Informatics
Douglas Derrick is an assistant professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Informatics. His primary teaching focus is in Information Technology Innovation, working with students to invent new IT-related products. Several of these products have received venture capital and multiple businesses have been started. Derrick’s research interests include human-agent interactions, intelligent agents, decision support systems and persuasive technology. He received his Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of Arizona in 2011. He also holds a master’s degree in computer science from Texas A&M University (1998) and an MBA from San Jose State University (2001). He also is a Distinguished Graduate (top 6 percent) of the United States Air Force Academy (1996).
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Alan Gift, Chemistry
Alan Gift’s area of interest is analytical chemistry and spectroscopy. An associate professor, Gift teaches general and upper level analytical chemistry courses. His undergraduate research students use spectroscopy to investigate pharmaceutical solid transformations and biodiesel contaminants. In addition, he is the faculty advisor to the Chemistry Club and the Internship Coordinator for the chemistry department. He received a BA in chemistry and a BA in physics from the University of Northern Iowa in 1997 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Purdue University in 2002. He was an assistant professor at Indiana University before joining the UNO faculty in 2008.
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Angie Hodge, Mathematics
Angie Hodge is an associate professor of mathematics at UNO, where she has taught since 2011. She also is the Haddix Community Chair focusing on recruitment and retention of mathematics teachers. Hodge’s primary teaching focus at UNO is the calculus sequence and graduate classes for mathematics teachers. Her research interests are mathematics education, inquiry-based learning and gender equity in STEM disciplines. She is a Project NExT national fellow and serves on the Mathematical Association of America’s COMET (committee on the mathematical education of teachers). She earned her master’s degree (2004) and Ph.D. (2007) from Purdue University in mathematics and mathematics education, respectively. She earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Minnesota State University in 2002.
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Wilma Kuhlman, Teacher Education
Wilma Kuhlman’s primary focus is graduate and undergraduate literacy education. She coordinates the Masters of Science in Literacy program for teachers who are literacy leaders in diverse school settings. Kuhlman, in partnership with Dr. Gigi Brignoni, founded the Oxbow Writing Project, UNO’s site of the National Writing Project. She directs the project. Kuhlman also has helped develop and coordinate educational culture walks for teacher candidates and others. Kuhlman has a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Bethany College (1980), a master’s in educational psychology from Wichita State University (1991) and a Ph.D. in elementary education from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1995). She has taught at UNO since 1995.
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Paul Landow, Political Science
Paul Landow’s primary teaching and research focus is American state and local government with a specialization in Omaha and Nebraska politics and government. He also is the internship coordinator for the political science department and director of the Nebraska Civic Leadership Program. He first taught at UNO as an adjunct instructor in 1994. He became an assistant professor in 2009. Prior to that he was chief of staff to Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey. Landow earned a master of public administration degree from UNO in 1992 and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1999.
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Holly Miller, School of Communication
Holly Miller’s primary focus is teaching undergraduate classes in communication studies. She regularly teaches business and professional communication, Argumentation Theory and Debate and the Fundamentals of Public Speaking. Miller also serves UNO as a faculty fellow with the Center for Faculty Excellence. In that capacity she coordinates faculty orientations, workshops, training sessions and book discussions. She has taught at UNO since 1996, first as a graduate teaching assistant. Miller received her BA in speech communication from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1975 and an MA in speech communication from UNO in 1997.
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Erin Pleggenkuhle-Miles, Marketing & Management
Erin Pleggenkuhle-Miles’ primary focus is strategic management. Her research examines how institutions and firm relationships impact firm performance in various contexts. Miles redesigned and coordinates the undergraduate capstone strategy business course, which houses an internal Case Study Competition that brings executives from the Omaha community into the classroom to judge students. She teaches strategy in the MBA program and has assisted in the curriculum revisions of the Management and Entrepreneurship concentrations. Miles also is managing director of the Koraleski Commerce and Applied Behavioral Laboratory and coordinates the Research Participation Program for the CBA Participant Pool. She earned an associate’s degree from North Iowa Area Community College (1999), a BS (international business, 2001) and MBA (2002) from Northwest Missouri State University, and a Ph.D. in international management studies from the University of Texas at Dallas (2012).
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Yaoqing (Lamar) Yang, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Yaoqing (Lamar) Yang is an associate professor in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Engineering on the UNO campus. His primary focus is wireless communications and networks in electrical and computer engineering. His scholarly activities relating to teaching improvement have been well recognized. Yang has developed two new courses for graduate and undergraduate levels for the electronics engineering program and computer engineering program and has implemented new strategies and methodologies to improve teaching effectiveness at UNO. Through interdisciplinary collaboration with faculty in UNO’s department of computer sciences, Yang worked on a three-year NSF REU project between 2011 and 2014. He earned a BS in electrical engineering from Northern Jiaotong University (1983), a master’s in electrical engineering from Beijing Broadcasting Institute (1986) and a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin (2006).
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Pictured, from left: Alan Gift, Chemistry, Arts & Sciences; Paul Landow, Political Science, Arts & Sciences; Holly Kingsley Miller, School of Communication, CFAM; Erin Pleggenkuhle-Miles, Marketing & Management, Business Administration; Robert Blair, School of Public Admin., CPACS; Wilma Kuhlman, Teacher Education, Education; Yaoqing (Lamar) Yang, Electrical & Computer Engg., Engineering; Douglas Derrick, IT Innovation, IS&T; Chancellor John Christensen. Not shown, Angie Hodge, Mathematics, Arts & Sciences. |