2016 UNO Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award
The UNO Alumni Association celebrated the 20th year of its Alumni Outstanding Teaching Awards program when it presented the honor to nine faculty members during the UNO Faculty Honors Convocation Monday, April 18. Association President Lee Denker presented the awards, established in 1997 to honor distinguished teaching in the classroom.
Peer committees in UNO colleges 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 2016 awards the association has issued $176,000 through the program. Brief descriptions of recipients follow below.
2016 AOTA RECIPIENTS
Dhundy Bastola, Bioinformatics, College of Information Science & Technology
Kerry Beldin, Social Work, College of Public Affairs & Community Service
Stuart Bernstein, Construction Systems, College of Engineering
Ana Carballal , Foreign Languages/Spanish, College of Arts & Sciences
Dora Matache , Mathematics, College of Arts & Sciences
Doug Paterson , Theater, College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media
Julie Pelton , Sociology and Anthropology, College of Arts & Sciences
Birud Sindhav, Marketing & Management, College of Business Administration
Franklin Thompson III, Teacher Education, College of Education
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Dhundy Bastola, Bioinformatics
Dhundy Bastola’s academic focus is in the lab studying information transmission and exchange in living systems with a particular interest in life-supporting mitochondrial organelles that are instrumental to cellular regulation and that provide cellular energy. His work helps determine the current status and general health conditions of protein, systems or cells and is relevant to the study of a variety of pathological conditions, including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes and aging. He also studies communication methods between health service providers and patients with chronic diseases, evaluating the role of information technology solutions (i.e., telehealth) in the delivery of remote health services to areas where traditional medicine is largely inaccessible. He is chair of the Biomedical Informatics Doctoral Program Committee. Bastola has a BS in biology from Trichandra College in Nepal, an MS in organic chemistry from Tribhuvan University in Nepal, and a Ph.D. in plant molecular biology from the University of New Hampshire. He joined the UNO faculty in 2007.
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Kerry Beldin, Social Work
Kerry Beldin has focused her academic activities around training professionals regarding mental health issues and improving intervention efforts targeting violence against women. She has taught a variety of courses at the graduate level and developed two courses for the Grace Abbott School of Social Work (GASSW) that reflect those interests. Beldin also serves as the MSW Coordinator for GASSW. Beldin joined the UNO faculty in 2008. She also serves as an assessment/audit coordinator for Lancaster County’s Community Assessment/Safety and Accountability Audit. She earned a BA in psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a master’s in social work from UNO and a Ph.D. in social welfare from Case Western Reserve University.
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Ana Carballal, Spanish
Ana Carballal’s expertise is in Galician studies and Postcolonialism. She also has been widely published on topics including immigration and exile, Afro-Hispanic literature and service learning. She directed UNO’s Spanish study abroad programs for five years, creating the program in Salamanca, Spain. She also created numerous Spanish studies courses on topics including Don Quixote, the Spanish Civil War and Spanish Women Writers. Carballal’s students serve places such as Girls Inc., and the Juan Diego and Chicano Awareness Centers, using their Spanish skills to teach, translate applications, help newcomers with paperwork and more. Carballal also coordinated the Pre-Tenure teaching circle and participated in teaching groups to introduce mindfulness practices to the classroom, review course evaluations and study ways to increase minority student enrollment. She joined UNO in 2004. She has a Ph.D. in Spanish literature from the University of Missouri and an MA in Spanish from the University of Kansas.
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Stuart Bernstein, Construction Systems
Stuart Bernstein has taught construction management and leadership classes for 14 years following a 25-year career in the construction industry. He works closely with area secondary schools, building relationships that encourage students to enter the construction management field. He frequently incorporates service-learning projects into his classes. Bernstein joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Engineering on the UNO campus in 2002. A U.S. Army veteran, he earned an AAS in architectural technology from Dutchess Community College, a BS in construction management from Syracuse, a BS in civil technology from Broome Community College, an MS in architecture from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
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Dora Matache, Mathematics
Dora Matache’s academic expertise is mathematical modeling and analysis of the dynamics of logical networks that are common in artificial life and in real-life areas such as genetics, biochemistry, social sciences, prediction markets and physics. She also promotes the inquiry-based learning paradigm in teaching that shifts focus from lecture to independent learning by students so that they become their own teachers. She received support from the Academy of Inquiry Based Learning to prepare publishable course notes for her course on logical networks. She has an MS and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Kansas. She also has a BA from the University of Timisoara in Romania, where she also taught mathematics. She joined the UNO faculty in 2001.
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Doug Paterson, Theater
Doug Paterson has focused on community-based theatre for most of his teaching and professional career. His teaching in higher education has ranged from acting and directing to theatre history, literature and theory. In the last 10 years he has developed a service-learning course, Theatre for Social Justice, and continues a critical reflection of the practice. His work in Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed has led him to begin the internationally known Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conferences, now in their 22nd year, and to travel throughout the world teaching the practices and occasionally using them for community dialogue. In 2015, Paterson conducted theatre workshops at the Tenth International Street Theater Festival in Meriwan, Iran. He joined the UNO faculty in 1981. He has an MA and Ph.D. from Cornell University and a BA from Yankton College.
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Julie Pelton, Sociology and Anthropology
Julie Pelton’s primary focus is the sociology of teaching and learning. She has worked extensively with her undergraduate theory courses to understand how sociology majors learn and whether student-learning outcomes can improve through use of effective learning strategies. She currently teaches Environmental Sociology, Social Stratification and Sociological Theory at the undergraduate level and a seminar on teaching at the postgraduate level. Pelton is the Online Sociology Program coordinator and undergraduate advisor on the UNO campus. She recently was appointed editor of TRAILS, a digital library of peer-reviewed teaching resources created by the American Sociological Association. She joined the UNO faculty in 2009. She received her BS from Illinois State and her MA and Ph.D. in sociology from Penn State University.
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Birud Sindhav, Marketing & Management
Birud Sindhav is among the few faculty members who teach courses at four levels of study: Marketing Research to undergraduates; Doing Business in China in the MBA program; Leadership and Managerial Toolkit in the Executive MBA program; and Marketing Management in Executive Education. Other teaching interests include Social Media Marketing and Marketing on the Internet. He has visited the UK, Australia, Spain and China with EMBA students for market feasibility studies. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Professor award by the Department of Marketing and Management. Sindhav also is a senior research fellow for the Institute for Collaboration Science at UNO. He joined the UNO faculty in 2000. He has a Ph.D. with emphasis on Marketing from the University of Oklahoma, an MBA from the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, India, and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Gujarat Agricultural University in India.
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Franklin Thompson III, Teacher Education
Franklin Thompson’s areas of expertise are in human relations, race relations, multicultural education, urban education, working with at-risk youth, conflict management and counseling. He also writes and publishes music with a human relations theme, which he uses to supplement his teaching and community outreach. Thompson also is a volunteer with the African-American Empowerment Network and several other community-based intervention groups. He also is a four-term member of the Omaha City Council, earning election first in 2001 and three times since as the District 6 representative. He joined the UNO faculty in 1993. He earned a BS in social studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, an MS in Agency & Community Counseling and Ed.D. in educational administration from UNO and an Ed.S. in Educational Administration from Southern Mississippi.
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Pictured, left: Pelton, Matache, Bernstein, Carballal, Paterson, Bastola, Thompson, Beldin. |