Our 2017 Section Teaching Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics goes to Darryl Yong of Harvey Mudd College. Dr. Yong has a lengthy record of innovative and caring teaching at Harvey Mudd College. He has shown a consistent commitment to inclusive pedagogy in his own classes and in his scholarship on secondary math education. He co-founded the nonprofit Math for America Los Angeles which supports local teachers though professional development. Most recently, he became the inaugural director of the new Center for Teaching and Learning at the Claremont Colleges. You can read more at his blog profteacher.com.

Our 2016 Section Teaching Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics goes to Dr. Shirley B. Gray of California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA).

Dr. Gray has a long record of teaching excellence. Students and colleagues alike remark on her "infectious enthusiasm." She has established connections across disciplines, with academic colleagues in computer science and engineering, as well as industry representatives. One of her colleagues describes her teaching in this way: "...she approaches teaching with great enthusiasm, passion, and commitment. She has a relaxed, informal teaching style, and skillfully makes use of different types of media and teaching techniques..." A key example of her innovative class activities is her annual math field trip to The Huntington Library in Pasadena, by arrangement with the Huntington's Curator of Manuscripts, to view original first editions. Dr. Gray is credited for her work in helping to bring the Archimedes Palimpsest to The Huntington. Dr. Gray is also known as the "driving force" behind the widely recognized National Curve Bank. This online resource has received multiple support grants (from the NSF and the Beckman Foundation) and has been recognized by Caltech, the College Board, and the MAA's Mathematical Sciences Digital Library (MathDL). Dr. Gray has many more teaching accomplishments and the strong, warm support of past students and colleagues at the local, regional, and national level.

Professor Daphne Liu of CSU Los Angeles is the winner of this year’s Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.

Professor Daphne Liu has an extraordinary record of teaching, individual mentoring, and scholarship. She has been a faculty member at Cal State LA for more than 24 years, where she has taught a wide range of subjects at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Students regard her as an extremely caring and supportive teacher who maintains high standards and challenges her students to new heights. Professor Liu’s unyielding commitment to students is evidenced by the energy and care she puts into helping her students succeed. Many of her students become teachers themselves and emulate her highly successful teaching style, to the benefit of succeeding generations of students.
Professor Liu is the Principal Graduate Advisor in her department where she guides students to be successful at Cal State LA and as they begin their professional careers. She is also a leader in her department in mentoring students on research projects at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. These projects often result in publications and award-winning student presentations. Professor Liu has supervised more than 50 students, including many minority and first-generation students. More than 30 of her former students either currently teach at universities after completing their Ph.D. or are enrolled in doctoral programs.

Professor Liu’s scholarly work complements her teaching interests. Her research areas include graph theory, its relations to number theory and topology, and its applications to broadcast communications.  She was the PI for two NSF multi-year research grants and has published more than 45 articles in highly regarded journals, some of which were co-authored by her students.  Professor Liu frequently is an invited speaker and has given more than eighty presentations in the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe. Her research on the channel assignment problem has inspired several NSF— or MAA—funded REU programs at other CSU campuses.  Currently, she is a co-PI of a $5 million multi-campus cross-disciplinary NASA grant (with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and UC Irvine) to recruit and train students, especially from underrepresented minorities, for careers in STEM fields and for future leadership roles.

Professor Liu was awarded the prestigious Cal State LA Outstanding Professor Award in 2003 and a competitive Innovative Teaching Award. She received her Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina, and her BS from the National Central University, Taiwan. Professor Liu has been a visiting scholar at several institutions in Taiwan and China.

Professor Shahriar Shahriari of Pomona College is the winner of this year’s Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics and a nominee for the national MAA’s 2014 Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.

Professor Shahriari has been an educator for 27 years, the past twenty-five at Pomona College. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986. Before arriving at Pomona College, he had faculty positions at Oberlin College and Cal State Northridge.

Professor Shahriari has already been recognized with Pomona College’s Wig Distinguished Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching four times. This award is the highest honor that Pomona, one of the outstanding liberal arts colleges in the nation, confers on its faculty. His engaging classes are not only some of the most challenging courses in the Pomona College math department, but also some of the highest enrolled. His innovative teaching approaches include using the Prime Number Theorem to motivate several topics in Calculus II. Some of this work appears in his book Approximately Calculus (AMS), which won the Library Association’s Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title in 2007.

But Prof. Shahriari’s outstanding contributions go beyond undergraduate students at Pomona College. The Pomona Academy for Youth Success (PAYS) program that he founded is now in its ninth year of successfully working with 10th-12th graders from groups historically underrepresented in higher education. Many program alumni never would have considered applying to college and now are walking the halls of Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley and many other elite institutions of higher education. Pomona College considered the program so successful that it built a center for community partnerships around it.

Professor Shahriari is the inaugural faculty mentor in Pomona College’s partnership with the Posse Foundation, which aims to bring exceptional high school students who may have been overlooked by the usual admissions process to elite colleges and universities throughout the nation. The list of accomplishments of Pomona College Posse alumni is quite impressive, and Professor Shahriari played a significant role in their success.

Professor Shahriari has many more teaching accomplishments, which were detailed in strong, wonderful letters of support contained in his nomination. These accomplishments are all the more impressive when one considers that his excellence in the classroom has been partnered with an excellent research record. Indeed, Prof. Shahriari has published eight peer-reviewed articles in mainstream journals with 24 student co-authors, with two more forthcoming. This is in addition to his three edited volumes and 40 articles, conference proceedings, and other publications.

Perhaps it is apt to close with a quote from one of the hundreds of students whose lives he has touched: “Over the years, this close mentor of mine has become one of the most respectable and trustworthy people at Pomona College. I can’t put in words all of the strengths of his character and pedagogy, but to mention a key point, I have always felt like Shahriari has shown the utmost interest in my personal well-being and success after college.”

Our 2013 Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics goes to Dr. Perla Myers from the University of San Diego (USD). Dr. Myers is an outstanding teacher, as evidenced by her nomination letter and supporting letters. One colleague wrote, “If a student needs more help or more time, Perla will find a way to give that to the student. She is extraordinarily creative; if one approach doesn't work she will find another. As a Hispanic woman Perla is a terrific role model for many students.” At USD, Perla co-organized a student chapter of SACNAS (the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science); directed USD’s Mathematics Center; and spearheaded an innovative mentoring project. Perla’s influence has extended well beyond her home institution. She co-founded our region’s Section NExT chapter. She was a co-PI on a California Math and Science Partnership Grant for an “Inquiry Learning Partnership” between USD, the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center (a local science museum), and the Lemon Grove and Chula Vista School Districts. She has organized Family Math Nights, where students work with elementary school children and their parents on math activities. Remarkably, the preceding list gives only a few highlights amongst Perla Myers’ many accomplishments in service to her students and to the education and inspiration of young mathematical minds throughout the surrounding community.

Francis Su's address at the Spring 2013 Section Meeting

Francis Su is the Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. His research is in geometric combinatorics and applications to the social sciences, and he has co-authored over 25 papers, half of them with undergraduates. From the MAA, he has received recognition for his writing and teaching, including the Hasse Prize in 2001, the Alder Award in 2004, and the Haimo Award in 2013. He recently concluded a term as MAA vice-president. His passion for teaching and popularizing mathematics is evident from his website "Math Fun Facts", which receives over a million hits each year, as well as his iPhone app by the same name. His hobbies include songwriting, gardening, photography, and theology; just like mathematics, these are modes of creative expression that divinely blend structure and freedom, truth and beauty, reflection and action.

Cindy Wyels' address at the Fall 2011 Section Meeting

The recipient of the Southern California-Nevada Section’s 2011 Distinguished Teaching Award, Professor Cindy Wyels from California State University, Channel Islands, is well-known to many of the students in the section as the organizer of the Student Poster Session at each Spring Meeting since 2004. This activity is part of a bigger picture: her dedication to introducing undergraduates – especially native Spanish speakers and first generation college students – to research in mathematics. Since 2004, Dr. Wyels has directed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) at California Lutheran University and later at CSU Channel Islands. A total of 63 undergraduates participated in these programs through 2010, with 38 from underrepresented groups. She also played a key role in a CSU Channel Islands summer program to engage local community college students in research.

Professor Wyels is a remarkable teacher who consistently receives excellent teaching evaluations from her students. She thinks creatively and carefully about her courses and the activities that will best lead to student learning. She employs a wide variety of instructional techniques in order to match a wide variety of student learning styles, including lecture, small group activities, self-paced computer labs, problem sets, and projects. As one student put it, "I can honestly say you are the best professor I have ever had!" Another one wrote: “Her passion and energy for teaching inspires and motivates her students, and her manner is both warm and approachable.”

Professor Wyels’ interest in excellence in teaching also extends to mentoring her colleagues. Perhaps most noteworthy is her role as cofounder and co-director of the Critical Friends Group (CFG) at CSU Channel Islands. Faculty from all disciplines meet biweekly for two hours to work on specific teaching dilemmas, to discuss pedagogical literature, and to provide each other with insight and support. Half of the tenure-track mathematics faculty at CSU Channel Islands participate in this group, which has resulted in a cultural shift of the pedagogical attitudes in the math department.

The MAA announced in early August that Dr. Wyels also will receive the MAA’s national award for outstanding teaching, the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, during the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston, Mass., Jan. 4-7.

Student Poster Session Organizer Cindy Wyels announces the award winners at the Spring 2009 MAA Section Meeting at Cal Lutheran.

Cindy Wyels received her Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara in 1994. Prior to joining CSUCI, Dr. Wyels served as chair of the mathematics department at California Lutheran University; her faculty experience also includes Weber State University and the United States Military Academy. She is director of the masters program in mathematics and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program at CSU Channel Islands. Dr. Wyels’ research interests are combinatorial mathematics and linear algebra. Most recently she has focused on questions in graph pebbling, a topic that she has used very successfully in REUs.

Dr. Wyels will give the invited address, “Unexpected Outcomes in Undergraduate Research,” at our Fall Section Meeting, to be held Saturday, October 15, at Cal State Los Angeles.

Our section’s Distinguished Teaching Award honors college or university teachers who have been widely recognized as extraordinarily successful and whose teaching effectiveness has been shown to have had influence beyond their own institutions. Recipients of the section award then become nominees for the national Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. During the past 12 years, we have had seven of our section winners (Art Benjamin, Curtis Bennett, Jaqueline Dewar, Erica Flapan, Judith Grabiner, Jennifer Quinn, and now Cindy Wyels) subsequently receive the Haimo Teaching Award.

This year’s selection committee was chaired by Magnhild Lien (CSU Northridge), with members Scott Annin (CSU Fullerton), Art Benjamin (Harvey Mudd College), Curtis Bennett (Loyola Marymount), and Florence Newberger (CSU Long Beach).

It’s never too early to consider nominating a colleague for the 2012 award or to volunteer to serve on the 2012 committee. Serving on the committee is fun and easy and is a great way to find out how to put together an effective nomination package. Please contact the Section Secretary or the Section Vice Chair if you are interested in serving.